This is my last week in NYC {and the story that brought me here}

I’ve got some really big news today.

This is my last week as a New Yorker.

I’ll be saying goodbye to 15 clients that I have loved and taught for as many as 10 years.{This is HANDS DOWN one of the hardest things I have ever done.}

Even six months ago I had NO IDEA this day was coming.

Let me back up and give you a little background. Here is the chronology:

• 2005:: I move to NYC as a dancer and yoga teacher, and am a full time yoga teacher by the fall of 2006
• 2006-2012:: Live and work as a yoga teacher in NYC, slowly build a thriving full time practice
• May 2012:: Move halftime to DC for boyfriend’s job {surprised by how much I love being out of NYC and create an awesome life and community in DC}
• Summer/Fall 2012:: Live a full blown double life, love that I get to have everything I want, but definitely feel torn between two different places and communities
• February 2013:: Leave said relationship, but decide to stay in DC anyway. Also continue to work in NYC with beloved private clients 3 days a week. Double life continues. Good but hard.
• December 2014:: I travel to Thailand
• Return home from Thailand and everything changes

Thailand was an amazing, but challenging experience. I was on retreat with my teacher Sara Avant Stover for the first week of my trip, and it was some of the most difficult work I have ever done. Sara is an incredibly skillful and serious teacher and we spent our week with her taking a deep dive into some of the darkest parts of ourselves. It was hard.We were scheduled from 7am to 9pm with meditation sessions, journaling time, asana, and mostly deep inner work exercises led by Sara. Much of our time was in silence. Please don’t think I am complaining; it was 90 degrees, sunny and humid, and the resort was beautiful, but a relaxing yoga vacation this was not.This stirred quite a lot in me; I left that retreat time feeling very awake to the inner workings of my soul in the most amazing and healing way.

After the retreat week finished, I traveled around Thailand totally alone for two weeks.

Everything that had been stirred up by my retreat time was still floating around, but now without the loving container of my teacher and retreat friends.Thailand is a beautiful country with incredibly friendly people that is set up to support tourists. It is a safe place to be a woman traveling alone. That said, there were many challenging moments traveling in a developing country alone, and they were exacerbated by the vulnerable, raw state I found myself in after the retreat. Managing the logistics of this trip by myself proved taxing at times.Just one story to illustrate:: As I traveled from the islands in the south to Chiang Mai in the north, I was really sick from the food, had a 36 hour travel day that included a terrifying ride on a “ferry”, {Rickshaw-on-water was more like it...}, multiple delayed and then canceled flights, and an unexpected overnight in Bangkok. Nothing I couldn't handle, but doing those kinds of things all alone took its toll.Also:: I stayed a few nights in a beautiful and secluded resort on a tiny island in the south. I was the only person staying there who wasn’t on a honeymoon. Y’all. I’m not even exaggerating. I was LITERALLY the only guest there not on a honeymoon.I had this conversation at least 5 times a day::Waiter:: How many people?Me:: Just one.Waiter:: Only one people?Me. Right. Only one people.Waiter:: You alone??Me:: Yes, I’m alone.Waiter:: You have no friend?Me. Right. I have no friend.Waiter:: Where is the husband?Me:: I don’t have a husband. Can you take me to my table please?Then I sit down at the table, and 5 minutes later have the EXACT SAME CONVERSATION with a different waiter. This happened so many times, I felt like I was in a bad romantic comedy.There was also no internet at this hotel, and I was staying in my own tiny little bungalow.

It was the most alone I have ever felt.

There wasn’t much to do, so I did long meditation practices, long asana practices, read, wrote in my journal, and FELT ALL THE FEELINGS.I knew what an incredible gift this was, and I didn’t wish it away for a moment, but y’all...it did not feel good. It felt hard.I think there is a misconception that inner work is beautiful and glamorous, or relaxing and peaceful. That has not been my experience. All the deepest work I have done in my life felt like WORK. It felt like digging a ditch. I didn’t forget for a SECOND how incredibly lucky I was to have the time and space and resources to take time for myself like that, but it didn’t feel relaxing and calming and glamorous. It felt like doing uncomfortable, manual labor.When I came home from that trip I felt incredibly raw and open and vulnerable. I was hyper aware of the way I was interacting with people after having spent so much time alone.I was thinking and journaling very intensely about the way I wanted to show up in all my most important relationships.I asked,“What kind of friend, what kind of daughter, what kind of teacher do I want to be?”I realized I wanted to be much more focused on, generous to and grounded for the people I love.The next question then was, “What do I need to do for myself every day, so I can engage in my most important relationships the way I want to?”

And there sat the answer, clear as day.

I need to live in only one city, and it can’t be New York.

{New York has so much to offer, and it is also an incredibly challenging place to live. I want to live in a place where going grocery shopping or just getting to work is not the hardest part of my day.}After living a double life for three years, and wondering and worrying about how long I could really keep this up, I finally let myself see the truth.

Once you let yourself see the truth, you can’t unsee it. {Tweet it.}

In the end, there was no decision to be made. The only thing to be done was allow myself to be quiet enough so the deepest truth could reveal itself.The other thing that made this the right time is that I have some amazing teachers who will be taking all my clients over from me. They are fabulous women who have been studying and mentoring with me for two years, and they sub for me when I am out of town. My clients know and love them, and the transition to the new teachers will be seamless.I will be a full time resident and yoga teacher in Washington, DC as of March 1st.This means I will have to build a private practice from scratch again. {I’ve already got a bunch of great irons in the fire that I feel really excited about!}If you stick around, you’ll get to watch me spend this year rebuilding a thriving private practice. I’ll share with you what is and isn’t working for me, and show you that building a private practice isn’t about fancy marketing, business secrets or having the perfect contacts.I built my first practice in a slow, organic way, because I built trust and relationships with my clients that allowed for deep work to be done. That deep work manifested as meaningful change in their lives, and their testimonials built my practice for me.I’m going to do it again here in DC. I’d love for you to join me for the ride!Tell me loves... Anyone else have big changes on the horizon? Share with us here!