OM meets...
KATE LEWIS
This month’s OM cover star is Kate Lewis, a US-based yoga teacher in New Jersey. Here she talks about her yoga journey and what the ancient practice means to her. Words and photos: Wanda Bogacka-Plucinski.
What made you take your first yoga class?
In a span of about two years, I lost my mum, then my husband lost his mum, my grandmother died and even our cat. We also lost our home and my husband lost his business due to a flood. As you can imagine, this was a very dark and sad time of my life. I felt very alone, almost as if I had become untethered from this world; I found myself really lost.
This led me to really spiral into some self-destructive behaviours like drinking too much alcohol, overeating or eating nothing at all. I knew that if I didn’t make some changes things would get even worse. On a whim, I went to a hot yoga studio, took a class and was hooked from that day on.
My love and appreciation for my yoga practice quickly deepened in the years after I started.
Although I had a well-paying job, it was very stressful and unsatisfying. There had to be more out there for me, I thought. Because yoga had helped me so much, the urge to share that with others began to grow deeply inside of me. So, I began to consider enrolling on a yoga teacher training (YTT) programme. I quit my job and decided that I would do whatever it took to become a fulltime yoga instructor.
To start, I became a work-study at the studio I practiced in. This was a great way to get to know more of the students and learn about how a yoga studio operates. I then graduated from my 200-hour YTT and began teaching full time. I went on to manage the studio for about two years before the pandemic hit.