As you get to know our June Student Ambassador, Devin Williams, you will quickly find out that his diverse yoga practice is a good window into the rest of his life. On his mat, he will practice everything from Hot 26 — where he started his practice — to all the Flow varieties as well as some Blast classes. Off his mat, he’s a communications analyst, musician, artist, writer, avid biker, trail runner, former football player … well, you get the picture.
“I’ve always kind of done a little bit of everything,” Devin said. “In the studio I started at in Maryland, I would do Vinyasa, HIIT classes, Hot 26. I think everything informs everything else. I don’t like to pigeonhole myself into any one thing, as my many interests show.”
Devin is not only the perfect yogi to be HYA’s Student Ambassador during the June challenge, which is titled Transform Through Awareness, but he will also be playing live music at the challenge celebration on June 29 at Drip Sauna. Sign up and join us for this unique event!
Devin moved to Asheville from the Washington, DC area two years ago and has quickly become a huge part of the local, as well as HYA, community.
“I needed a change of pace,” he said. “I had a remote job and I was a little over a year into that job when I decided to move. This was the first stop on my trip around the U.S. I was going to go to Colorado next. I had signed up for a bike race and already had an Airbnb in the Fort Collins area and I just decided not to do it because I liked Asheville so much. I liked the music scene, the art scene. I kind of wanted to be in a smaller town, coming from DC and New York. I wanted to live in a mountain town. That was the biggest thing.”
Devin’s remote job is about to end because the government is cutting the U.S. Agency for International Development, where he works as a communications analyst. So he will have more time for all his other passions. You can find his music, including his latest album, on Spotify under his artist name: Sensory Director.
Read more about Devin and his journey:
HYA: How did you get into yoga?
Devin: I first did yoga when I was in high school. It was a class. I went to a small school in Alexandria, Va. There were only like two other students in the class. It was in the theater room. It was cool. Years later when I was in college in New York and friends would say let’s go do some yoga and I would do it occasionally. It wasn’t until maybe four years ago, my Mom gave me a pass to go to this yoga studio in Maryland and I didn’t really use it for a few months and finally a neighbor said, why don’t we go do this yoga class? It was Hot 26. I was hooked from that first class. I was starting a new job and there was a lot of stress in my life in general, so I started going consistently. Sometimes I would do it every day, do doubles and stuff in that first year.
I had a friend who recommended Asheville and I came down for a month. I found HYA because it was the only place that had Hot 26 or Bikram in the area. I started coming here and I liked it better than my studio back home.
HYA: How did your music career come about?
Devin: The first instrument I played was the drums. My grandmother bought me a drum set when I was like 7. By fifth grade I started playing alto sax. I got really into that. I was a band nerd. I was writing my own sheet music in middle school. I was first or second chair in band. I was really into it. I practiced with a jazz band and I was also in the marching band and the regular band. I was also on the football team. I was on the varsity my freshman year and I would joke that I could take off my equipment and go into the stands and play. I could play in the band during halftime.
HYA: Football pushed aside your music career for awhile, right?
Devin: Yeah, I played football pretty seriously. I got recruited to play in college and I went to Columbia. I had to quit the band in 10th grade because I was so busy. I was on the robotics team too. In college after I stopped playing football after my freshman year, I got into practicing guitar and became a closet musician, playing with the piano a little bit.
I took two years off from college. The second year I took off I stayed in New York. I had saved up a little money and I was working in a bike shop and I was just going to make art for a year and see where I was. I worked in a music studio, Jimi Hendrix’s music studio, Electric Lady, in Greenwich Village. It was probably the toughest job that I ever had and it was unpaid. I was physically and mentally drained at the end of every shift. The night shift would start at 5 or 6 pm and end at like 2 pm the next day. It was a lot. I was weird sleeping during the day and not getting paid. It was physical labor, cleaning the studio, running around New York delivering instruments and things around town. I remember delivering a flash drive to Jack Antonoff of The Bleachers. It was all these like top secret songs. I was thinking, I don’t want to lose this.
I learned a little bit of audio engineering there but I learned more how the music industry works and just the work ethic. I went back to college and during the pandemic I went back to Maryland. I worked at a studio there and learned quite a bit more about audio engineering. I was shadowing one of the engineers. He’d give me tips on what I could do to tweak things. It was a cool studio. I met a lot of cool people there and had a lot of fun. But money, it’s a thing. I told him, I got a government job. I’ve got to pay my bills. I just always continued making music. It’s a big reason I wanted to move here. It’s a really good music community, not as cutthroat as someplace like New York.
HYA: What else have you immersed yourself in?
Devin: I was also in art school, did a lot of photography, sculpture, learned how to weld. It’s always a struggle to balance everything. I also write. I work on screenplays.
I’ve always been into art and fashion, now I’m really trying to study it to learn about the whole industry, what goes into making a garment. It’s a lot like sculpture.
HYA: How has HYA helped in this journey?
Devin: My practice has definitely become stronger since being here because of the consistency and great teachers. In general, I like being in this environment, in a mountain town with a little less stress in general. That definitely has helped. Being able to get into nature readily. I do a lot of biking and trail running. Did a 50K trail run last summer, doing a bike-packing trip for the first time. I like doing a little bit of everything.
