As anyone who has practiced at HYA knows, Heather is the heart and bright, smiling face of our studio. Not only does she teach her kick-ass Flow and Blast classes, but she is also mom to two sons, has her own brand (Haute Yogi) and serves as HYA’s General Manager, leading the team that ensures the studio runs smoothly from top to bottom.
This month, she is leading our next HYAcademy Workshop: The Art of Deeper Forward Folds. It’s a subject near and dear to her heart because as a runner who struggled through many injuries and physical misalignments, Heather remembers what it was like not being able to forward fold.
“I remember being in class and the flow would have a wide-legged forward fold, and I don’t go anywhere,” she said. “My hamstrings were so tight, my pelvis area was so locked up, so it’s really important to me to be able to help people find that freedom. This whole pelvis area is a bridge between your upper body and lower body and allows you to come deep into yourself, not just physically but mentally. That’s why I chose folds because I remember being stuck in that spot of, I can’t fold. We all can, we just need to know how.”
Watching her students transform through their practice is what Heather treasures most about teaching. Physically, she has been through many of the issues that confront her students. She started doing yoga at home and did not come to a hot yoga class until she found HYA. She had moved from Chicago to Asheville, was in the middle of a teacher training in 2012 when her sister Sarah convinced her to try a class. She has never looked back.
“Yoga got ahold of me and was like, ‘You’re not going anywhere,'” she said, laughing.
“At this point, I have realized this is a full body maintenance program for life. When I stop, I feel every ounce of it, from mental discomfort to physical pain. My body will not do without it at this point. I have no choice but to keep doing it.”
Read more about Heather’s journey, and sign up for her HYAcademy workshop on August 10:
HYA: How did you get started practicing yoga?
Heather: I was 19 and on my third herniated disk. After having one, getting another one, going through PT, other exercises doctors gave me, other options such as shots, and surgery was like the last thing they offered. I had to listen to a little voice inside me that said there has to be another way. This doesn’t have to be your life. What threw the nail in the coffin was, during one of the last doctor visits I had, trying to find somebody to help me was someone sliding me three different prescriptions and saying you should just refrain from physical movement.
I decided to put my health in my own hands. Because we seek outside ourselves for help and with all due respect there’s a time and place for all of that but I just realized it was up to me, not anybody else, to physically change my body.”
So I ended up going to the library, to the health and wellness section and finding a book on yoga and pilates. I did them both in tandem every day. Shiva Rea, she rocked my world on the DVD. She was a savior. I was a longtime runner and lifted weights and I never thought anything could replace that for me. I was locked in that mentality, but then when I got into yoga I realized I could gain strength and heal my body simultaneously I was like, this is the winner. I had a home practice for many, many years before I even stepped foot into a studio. I only practiced alone. I think at that time I was too shy to do it in front of other people.
It wasn’t until I moved to Asheville that I took my first public class at Stephanie Keach’s donation studio on Liberty Street, back in 2010. My first public flow class. I was self-taught at home with all these DVDs and books. I remember going over to that studio to take what I thought was a Yin class. Only to have a sub walk in, Lisa Sherman, and say ‘I’m going to sub a Power Flow today.’ And I was just saying to myself, ‘Don’t leave, just try it, don’t leave,’ in like, a panic. I took that class and I realized is it’s like a dance for my body. The fact that music could get involved, I was like, this is cool.
HYA: You took your first teacher training in 2012 in Asheville. How did you find HYA?
Heather: I didn’t enter that teacher training necessarily thinking I was going to teach. I just wanted to go because I was so into it and wanted to learn more and how it could continue to heal my body. Like most people, I went into it for physical healing, for yoga asana, only to realize it was this bigger system of a lot of things I could do to be healthy. But yoga had allowed me to start running again, and I had my first son, Madden, and my back was hurting a lot during that training. My older sister Sarah, said, ‘You’ve got to come try this hot yoga. You’ll really like it.’ We went down to the old studio, where there was blue carpet, one room, one mirror, one toilet. That was it. I walked in that room and that was like being cracked wide open. I realized this was a whole other level of this game. And I thought, I’m in.
HYA: How did you begin teaching?
Heather: The studio had moved here and one day Adi (HYA owner Adi Westerman) was moving through the lobby frantically because she had just added on Hot Power Flow to her schedule and she was leaving for a whole month. And she was the only one who was teaching it. I remember looking at her and asking, do you need help? I said I can teach Power Flow. After my teacher training, I was teaching around town, all over the place, every event space, back of the breweries, at my work, as much as I could. I ended up doing a sample class for her and after about 15 minutes she said, ‘That’s great, you’re hired.’ I taught her classes and when she got back she said, do you mind still helping and I said sure. Nine years later, I’m still here.
HYA: When you started at HYA, it only offered Hot 26. How did that practice help you?
Heather: Hot 26 is what introduced me to hot yoga which is why I have such a deep love for it. It’s what got me in the door. It definitely helped realign my spine and correct all sorts of things I had going on. From running to physically having a baby, and the issues from my past with the herniated disks, I feel it. I definitely owe it to 26 for strengthening my body all over again, from deep in my core to my spine and everything else gets strong along the way. It’s definitely medicine.
HYA: Now what does your practice schedule look like?
Heather: I am super grateful to say I have accomplished a really well-rounded practice of Hot 26, where I get my stability and my strength and healing and then I get to rock out my jams and creative side and that dance-like feeling in Flow. I used to dance a lot. That fed that part of me, the rhythm and the flow. On top of it being introduced to pilates in a whole new way, with Inferno and Blast. Let’s throw it in the mix. I have a really well-balanced practice. Meditation and breath work are things I do at home. It’s a part of my home practice. It’s easier for me to tune into myself when I’m by myself and not in a room, which is why I keep it there.
HYA: What’s the best part about teaching?
Heather: Watching people change, that whole process that they go through. Because I remember being in the thick of it, going in there and wondering, can I do this? You watch people’s layers fall off, self-doubt, being critical of themselves and just showing up. So long as you’re not in pain, if you’re moving your body around freely, that’s healing in itself.
People get the opportunity to come back to themselves and for me that’s fun to watch. I feel super grateful to have a room of people I see all the time. When I think of the opportunity to teach in a community of the same recurring students over and over again, that’s the beauty of watching it all unfold in front of you. I love it when students have the aha moments. When they say, I heard you say…. and I laugh because I’ve only been saying that for nine years. But you heard it because you were ready to hear it. I like to see the explosion of excitement in those aha moments in people’s faces when they reclaim something, whether it’s their body or their breath, whatever part of the system gets touched and ignited.
