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I huffed my way up the four flights of stairs that led to Y7’s Upper East Side studio location. After signing in for class, I entered a room blanketed in darkness except for faint candlelight flickering along the walls. It felt like an invitation to go inward. I quietly claimed my usual spot—front row, left side, closest to the wall.
More students started making their way into the space, filling the rows with mats no more than two to three inches apart. We were a close-knit group of strangers who regularly showed up to flow together in the dark against a backdrop of booming hip-hop music.
The class began with its usual Ujjayi breathing, bumping beats motivating us to move, and sweat dripping onto yoga towels. It continued throughout intense sequences that challenged and strengthened us to the point where I was exhausted and exhilarated by the end.
After we’d lazily drifted back from Savasana, the woman on the mat to my right turned in my direction.
“Are you a yoga teacher?” she asked me casually.
I remember laughing quietly (read: awkwardly) and shaking my head no. She mentioned she’d looked in my direction throughout the class whenever she felt lost and followed my movements to find her way again. She’d assumed that I was a teacher there, too. I smiled and laughed uncomfortably again. (I’ve never been one who could take a compliment.)
I shrugged and explained that I came to class a lot, hesitant to accept what she saw as anything more than a practiced habit. After all, I’d attended yoga nearly every day for half a decade.
She grinned at that, nodded, and we exchanged pleasantries as strangers do. And then we left the studio.
But her comment stayed with me. I even remember taking a photo as I left and posting it on my Instagram stories along with a self-effacing comment along the lines of, “Someone just asked me if I was a yoga teacher after class lol, if only!”
If only.
If only I could let myself invest in myself. If only I could be both a student and a teacher. If only I could carve out time outside my full-time career. If only I could go deeper than a physical practice that always brought me so much ease and discover all that’s beneath what a casual observer sees.
“If only” became my mantra—and my only option. I began yoga teacher training seven months and five days after that stranger altered my trajectory.
Life Prior to That Pivotal Yoga Class
Before this point, I had always taken my version of the safe route. I went to college, I got on a career trajectory that once upon a time someone told me to craft, and I worked hard to walk it.
On that path, I only looked ahead, determined to reach the end. But after that class, it was as if the stranger’s comment made me look at what existed beside that, almost like a field of wildflowers beckoning.
Veering off the path felt like a risk, and the only risk I’d taken in my career until this point was moving to New York City. But once I noticed the wildflowers, I couldn’t help but want to linger among them.
As it turns out, I’m better off in the wild than on the traditional path. On the first day of teaching yoga, I was laid off from my corporate job. I took it as a sign. I chose not to return to corporate and instead began cultivating my own writing company while teaching yoga part-time.
That eventually led me to move to Europe, where I found a home in Vienna, Austria, and where I now teach classes in English. (And, fittingly, where there are many real wildflowers.) This dramatic change in course would have shocked my former self.
Much of that had to do with one curious and kind person seeing me, saying something to me, and showing me a mirror that I never dared look into. It wasn’t much, but it was a gentle push, a peek through a door I hadn’t seen, that prompted me to take a chance on myself, changing everything.
How a Simple Recognition Can Spark A Lifetime of Change
Years later, I think about how many seemingly inconsequential moments are actually monumental. How something innocuous can spark something in someone. How a simple question or compliment can become the gentle nudge that alters, well, everything.
It’s easy to visualize how this could manifest in everyday life. Imagine..
Complimenting someone’s witty puns leads them to start an Etsy shop with punny greeting cards.
Admiring someone’s living room wall art at a party inspires them to do interior design consulting.
Remarking on a stranger’s quirky and lovely compilation of patterns in their outfit motivates them to launch a pre-loved apparel company (because little did you know they had sewn it).
Asking a barista if he made the woven bracelet on his wrist prompts him to start selling them at the register.
Asking a colleague at team karaoke if they’d ever auditioned for anything encourages them to finally go for it—and get the gig.
One question, one comment, one acknowledgement might make all the difference for someone to see themselves differently. These unspoken words are always on our tongues. Why not say them?
We should express awe, show curiosity, and help people witness themselves as we do far more frequently. We should be more active observers, more conscious bystanders, and more kind onlookers.
Your question could alchemize an answer for that person. And it could change everything.
I know it did for me.
RELATED: Feeling Like You Don’t Want to Go to Yoga? Read This.
