We are excited to introduce the newest member of HYA’s front desk team, Ellen Minier. If you have practiced at our studio at all for the past four years, you have likely practiced with Ellen, who found HYA in 2021 and quickly became a dedicated regular. She is also a chef who has supported studio events with her amazing cooking as well!
After two amazing careers — chef and psychiatric nurse — Ellen is now turning her attention full-time to her love of yoga. She joins our front desk team as she is also working on a yoga teacher certification with the dream of becoming a yoga therapist. She is working to combine her background in supporting mental health in an environment she truly believes in. Helping HYA students navigate their experience at the studio is a natural role for her.
“What I’m looking forward to is being able to share my enthusiasm for what hot yoga has done for me,” Ellen said. “It’s a privilege to be able to share my excitement with people, especially new people coming in. They don’t know what it’s all about. And then to see others’ transformation, it affirms why we’re all doing this. And I love working at a place that feels like home for me. When I walk through the door, it’s my home away from home.”
Ellen has used her yoga practice to recover from significant trauma in her life, as well as losing more than 100 pounds by teaching her techniques to live and eat mindfully.
She has stepped away from her nursing career, but continues to use her cooking skills as a private chef and caterer, as well as volunteering to teach culinary skills to women recovering from trauma.
Give her a special welcome, and read more about Ellen’s journey:
HYA: How did you first get into yoga?
Ellen: I had a frayed biceps tendon from reaching around behind me in the car to get something. I was looking for something to be able to heal so I could lift my arm again. There was nothing they could do to fix it. It wasn’t torn. It was just stretched out. My doctor recommended yoga and I started doing it and fell in love with it. I decided I was going to take classes at different studios around town and the studio I connected the most with was HYA.
Along the way, that’s where the weight loss started. I started taking a breath between bites and it was more about the awareness than it was about going on a diet. It helped me in every way.
It’s something I really connected with, heart and soul. It didn’t seem like exercise to me. It seemed like something that helped my mind and my body at the same time.
HYA: What had been your experience trying to lose weight before then?
Ellen: I had bariatric surgery and then, because I didn’t change anything else but the vessel, I gained it all back. When I started doing yoga, it came off naturally. I didn’t have to try. I didn’t have to diet. It was the awareness, slowing down, not eating mindlessly in front of the television. I was able to lose weight and eat what I wanted and that was a major thing for me. Because I love food.
I have gained some of that back this past year because I went through a bunch of stuff, but it’s another reminder to stay with purposeful movement. It puts me in that mindset of eating healthier and slowing down and taking a breath and enjoying the food, enjoying the journey instead of eating for comfort or other reasons. I’m nourishing myself. Yoga really opens that up for me.
HYA: How did you come to have so many different careers?
Ellen: Being a chef came first, but after I had kids, nursing seemed like a better profession. When you’re a chef, the hours were terrible for parenting. In nursing, you work fewer days, have insurance and get paid more. But I’m at the point where I don’t want to define myself by what I do anymore. That was a big decision. Once my kids grew up, I started not wanting to be defined by my career and needing something with a much lower stress level. Because the mental health field is so broken, I was trying to paddle upstream. It was too taxing on me mentally. I just couldn’t do it anymore. I needed to take care of myself, prioritize my own mental health.
HYA: How do you use your culinary skills now?
Ellen: By helping people if they’re planning a party or need help with meal prep. I do a lot of that for people. I volunteer/help teach culinary education classes at Transformation Village, the women’s and children’s shelter here in town. I love it. It’s not fine dining but it’s very cool to see people learning about how to eat well, eat well on a budget, cook for their kids instead of taking them to the drive through to eat fast food. I’m doing a lot of wellness teaching up there. That’s been a wonderful thing.
