Storytime: What’s my ‘Why’ for practicing yoga?
July 2023
I began my career working at a bank in my hometown during college. Then I worked in retail, where a colleague helped me to land my first job in public relations. From that first experience, I launched a career in marketing communications for non-profit associations and private organizations. During that time I had many career ups and downs, and gained more leadership experience than I could quantify, but consistently felt overlooked, overworked, and underappreciated, despite working my butt off and achieving great accomplishments. Concurrently while building my career, I went to grad school, got married, had two amazing children, and built a life I loved (at least from 5 p.m. to 5 a.m. each weekday). I’m sure you’re saying “But Christen, why would you only enjoy life for such a small portion of the day?” Simply put, even though I put in a lot of work to build my career, after a while, it became hard to enjoy. I’m sure many can relate.
Back then it was hard for me to find contentment because my ambitious nature in the workplace always pushed me to strive for more — and I did, sometimes to the detriment of my physical or mental health. There was always an email to send or a project to work on. I can remember working on my then 10 projects at once and wondering why I was still trying so hard when it was clear that I wasn’t being rewarded, recognized, or respected. I allowed myself to live that way for much of my professional career.
In 2019, something shifted. I realized that the job/title/status I had been chasing my entire career was no longer appealing to me, so I took a chance on myself and left office politics and toxic workspaces behind. I planned to take some time off to allow myself to regroup and then work for myself as a communications consultant. Just as I felt that I was starting on that journey and feeling a little better about those experiences, the pandemic began, and what followed was 3 months of chaos as I tried to figure out what my kids should be doing, as teachers scrambled to try to give classwork and try to create a class structure in an entirely different format than anyone was used to. Then summer came, and I was able to focus on building my small business. Once the school year started, my kids stayed at home for virtual school, and I re-adjusted my schedule to serve as my children’s daily Zoom connection issue solver, lunch lady, and timekeeper for asynchronous and synchronous classwork times (if you know, you know) — basically regular mom stuff times 10. Needless to say, my business and career goals took a temporary back seat. It was a challenge, but we made it through, and I even found a silver lining: I loved taking my kids outside during their recess breaks, and I really loved that I got to spend so much time with them at that stage in their lives — as anyone with children can tell you, they grow fast!
In 2022 I was led to deepen my yoga practice by figuring out how to create a consistent practice for my own health and well-being. I signed up for a level 200 course at my local yoga studio, and for six months I learned yoga principles, yoga asanas, sequencing, teaching and so much more. The most important thing I learned is that people come to yoga for many reasons and that being out in the world can sometimes be hard, and it can cause us to lose confidence in ourselves for many reasons. Sometimes that loss of confidence can show up clearly on the mat. But I learned that by showing up on the mat, I was able to get some of that which I felt I had lost, back.
I finished my program in April 2023, and have been teaching private sessions since then. I love telling and showing as many people as I can about the benefits of yoga, meditation, and contentment. But I don’t just talk about it — I live it, and I would love to help you create a consistent yoga plan that you can commit to.
My goal with Be Content Yoga is to help modern employees and business owners bring the peace and contentment they find through yoga with them each day — to meetings, to presentations, to after-school pickup, and anything else.