Over the next year, I immersed myself in two things: my relationship and my career. Focusing on my yoga practice helped me heal and also gave me time to breathe new life into my teaching. On a whim, I had chosen the Instagram handle @yoga_girl and started gearing my social media presence more toward yoga—taking photos of beautiful poses and pairing them with musings about life and love. I tried not to filter my views but tell it the way it was. Not just the good, but the raw and difficult times as well. The more real I was, the more I revealed about my imperfect life, the more people related to me. I wasn’t quite sure how it all happened, but more and more people were suddenly drawn to my account. As my online community grew from family and friends when I first started to thousands of people I didn’t know, I began focusing a lot more energy toward social media. I was new to it—I’d just recently gotten my first-ever smartphone, years after all of my friends back in Sweden did, but I realized that it wasn’t all that hard. I used the self-timer app on my phone to take photos of my yoga practice, and then shared them on Instagram paired with a caption about something I’d been pondering that day. In the beginning I wrote mostly about yoga, sharing tips and pieces of advice for people looking to begin a yoga practice. Soon questions started coming in and I did my best to answer them. “How far apart should you keep your feet in Downward-Facing Dog?” was a commonly asked one, or “What are some good yoga poses for me to help alleviate my back pain?” or “How can I find a teacher I resonate with?” As I became more comfortable sharing pieces of my life online, I started writing about more personal topics. After a while, baring my soul to complete strangers didn’t feel odd at all. Every day I’d write about my search for balance, or self-love, or forgiveness. I realized that everything I’d ever felt, other people felt, too. I wasn’t alone on this journey. It didn’t take long before my community had grown so big that I couldn’t keep up with answering all the questions anymore. When seemingly out of the blue I had reached 50,000 followers, I almost couldn’t believe it. That was half the population of Aruba! I couldn’t believe that so many people were interested in following my journey. I was grateful, and continued sharing my life through social media every day.
At the same time, my classes in Aruba filled up faster than I could post about them, and I was beginning to receive invitations to teach at studios in other countries. Dennis was in the midst of opening up a skate shop on the island, and we took a trip to Surf Expo in Orlando to place orders for the shop. One day when I was walking from one of the booths I saw a group of girls leaning in toward one another, whispering and pointing at me. I shook it off, thinking maybe they had me confused for someone, when I heard one of them say, “I swear! That’s her, that’s Yoga Girl!” I was mortified and picked up my pace to walk away as fast as I could. These people . . . They recognized me? From Instagram? That had never happened to me before, and for some reason, I felt ashamed. The way the girl had said it didn’t sound positive—I felt exposed, looked at. A few hours later I saw the same group of girls, and this time they started walking my way. I took a deep breath, not knowing what to expect, when suddenly, one of them burst into tears. “Are you Yoga Girl? You are, right? I can’t believe it! You have been such a huge inspiration to me—I found yoga thanks to you. It completely changed my life. Can we take a selfie?” I was stunned. I was an inspiration? What? I couldn’t believe my ears. We took the photo, and as I put my arm around her shoulder I felt her shaking. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just can’t believe it’s you. Thank you for everything you do. Really.” She hugged me tight, and before I knew it they were gone. Dennis looked at me like we’d just seen a UFO descend in front of us. He couldn’t believe his ears either. “Whoa” he said. “That was kind of cool.” “It was?” I asked. “Hell yes! She said you were the reason she found yoga, and that it changed her life! That’s crazy! It means you’re doing something good, babes.” He hugged me.
It felt odd. How could I have impacted someone’s life when I’d never even met them before? When a little later in the day I shared on Instagram that I was in Orlando, a few people commented asking if I could teach a class while I was there. Feeling empowered by my encounter at the expo, I decided to roll the dice and give it a try. What was the worst thing that could happen? I googled “Orlando + yoga studio” and proceeded to e-mail every yoga studio in the area, asking if any of them had space to host a class on short notice. Most didn’t even bother to reply, and if they did it was with questions I didn’t know how to answer. I didn’t have a website, or any credentials, or a bio to send. When I told them I was planning to market the class through Instagram I was met with skepticism. This was 2012, and social media and yoga were a new combination. One studio in the Orlando suburbs wrote me back saying they’d be willing to open the space in exchange for a 50-50 split of the revenue. I said I thought maybe three or four people would come and that of course I’d be fine with any split! I was just looking forward to the opportunity to teach outside of Aruba. When it was time to drive to the class I was so nervous I had to ask Dennis to pull the car over because I was worried I might vomit. Thankfully I didn’t, and when we made it to the studio I was met with a sight that made my jaw drop to the floor: there was a line from the studio entrance out into the street! Was there some big event happening before my class? I wondered. Walking in, all eyes turned to me. “Oh my God!” a woman said. “She’s here!” The studio had a max capacity of thirty-seven people and more than fifty people had arrived, some having driven across Florida to be there. The woman in charge of checking people in was frantically trying to move things from the boutique so people could lay their mats down there, too. The biggest class I’d ever taught before that moment was probably around fifteen people. I hugged as many people as I could on the way in, and getting changed in the dressing room I thought to myself, If you’re going to panic, now is the time. I didn’t. Instead, I put my yoga pants on and stepped out into the room. When Dennis and I left the studio a few hours later, I was on cloud nine. I couldn’t remember a single thing I’d just taught.
“It was great,” Dennis said. “You were really, really great.” I squeezed his hand. “Thanks,” I said. “So . . . Do you think this is something we could do more of?” He looked at me. “Yeah. Definitely.” That first class in Orlando sparked another, which sparked another, and another. A few months later Dennis and I embarked on a thirty-six-city tour across North America, teaching in as many places as we could get to. I got better at negotiating with studios (50-50 is a terrible deal!), and classes grew from fifty to eighty, and then up to a hundred people. My Instagram community was growing by the thousands every day. In a short time we’d created what seemed to be the perfect life—combining the skate shop in Aruba with traveling anywhere we wanted in the world, teaching yoga to pay our way. For us, it was an absolute dream.
It was on one of those trips that we ended up in Maui and one beautiful afternoon, Dennis took me up to the summit of the Haleakala volcano and proposed. We were above the clouds, watching the most breathtaking sunset either of us had ever seen, when suddenly he went down on one knee. My gut reaction wasn’t pure joy, the way I’d imagined it, but actual panic—I had to take a deep breath and remind myself to stay put. I was so used to running, so used to self-sabotage, that I had to pause to bring myself back to the present moment. My whole life, all I’d known was separation, divorce, and loss. I didn’t have a single person—parent or grandparent on either side of my family—who hadn’t gotten divorced. I had no experience of what a solid commitment looked like and, in that moment, I had to remind myself of a couple of things: (1) You are not your past. You can break the cycle of struggle you were born into. (2) It is safe to love and be loved. Dennis isn’t going anywhere. You went through the hard time and, still, he didn’t waver. He’s here to stay. Now it’s up to you to decide if you are, too. Standing there on that mountaintop during one of the most important moments of my life, an old question I hadn’t asked myself in a long time popped into my head: What’s the
most loving thing to do here? As I looked at Dennis, standing on one knee, tears in his eyes, the answer was resounding. The love of my life was in front of me, holding a ring. There was nothing to fear—there was only love. The answer came from deep inside my heart. Yes. Yes! A thousand times, yes.
I called my mom to tell her the news, but she already knew. Dennis had not only asked both of my parents for their blessings, but even had my grandmother’s old wedding ring flown in from Europe. It was a merge of old and new—a piece of my past merging with my future wrapped around my ring finger. I remembered what the cacao shaman had told me: “Healing works both ways—it heals what’s been before and what’s yet to come.” Wearing my grandmother’s ring embodied that sentiment: I was closing wounds from long ago by choosing love here and now. It was beautiful. We spent the rest of the year feeling newly in love, over the moon with excitement. Looking at my life, I was in awe of how much had changed in such little time. In just a few years I’d gone from feeling depressed and stuck to being engaged to the love of my life, pursuing my greatest passion and traveling the world while doing so. How did I get so lucky?
When I hit a million followers on Instagram, Dennis and I celebrated with a glass of champagne—the size of the community was mind-blowing! It brought with it amazing opportunities to create anything we wanted. I was so grateful, but at the same time I missed the intimate privacy of our old lives. Getting recognized everywhere I went made me feel like I was always looked at but never seen. I started avoiding yoga studios and places I knew were filled with people who might want to approach me and soon the thought of another trip made me feel weary instead of excited. I knew I needed to slow down but kept saying yes to every opportunity that came my way.
After tons of back-to-back retreats and working for a year straight without a break, I flew to Costa Rica for the 2014 Envision Festival in February. By then, I was bone tired. Why did life feel as if it were getting away from me all of a sudden? By then, I was traveling every week for engagements away from home and my social media community had grown to the size of a small country. Every day I woke up to comments, questions, and sometimes judgments from people I didn’t know. What had begun as an exciting way to see the world through my passion for yoga, however amazing, was also growing into a demanding and often stressful business. I needed a break before the festival and private time with my best friend.
Andrea was waiting at the airport when I landed in San José. I hadn’t seen her since December, just two months earlier, when I’d asked her to be a bridesmaid in my wedding.
I’ll never forget that day. I’d taught a retreat in the mountains above Dominical, and Andrea, who was new to yoga but intrigued, joined us for the week. Now the retreat had ended and we were watching the sunset on the beach, reminiscing about old times. We held hands walking out into the ocean, letting the golden rays of the sun warm our skin. I’d been waiting all day to broach the subject and it felt like the right moment.
“There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you,” I said.
“What?”
“Okay, so don’t freak out, but . . . Want to be my bridesmaid?”
Andrea’s eyes flew open. “I thought you would never ask!” she cried. She waded over to me, smiling and laughing and hugging me so fiercely she pushed me over. A wave crashed over us and when we surfaced again she was laughing out loud.
I asked her, “Is that a yes?”
“Yes!” she squealed. “Oh my God! I’m going to be the best bridesmaid ever! I’ll braid your hair. I’ll take care of everything. But don’t you go all bridezilla on me!”
“I’m already bridezilla.” I laughed.
“We’re going to Sweden!” she shrieked. “Sweden! Holy shit! This is going to be the best year!”
Now, picking me up at the airport two months later, Andrea hugged me again, but this time so tightly that I almost lost my breath. “Whoa!” I said. “You’ve missed me, huh?” She looked at me, her eyes serious. “I just felt like you needed a real hug. You’ve been so busy lately. We haven’t spoken all week!” She was right. I wasn’t taking as much time for my friends as I normally would, always with the excuse of teaching or traveling. I craved time with my bestie. We instantly settled back into our regular rhythm.
On my first night back, we drove to a little wine bar and spent the evening catching up. So much had happened in so little time. I was getting married, she had a new boyfriend. We were both in solid, committed places in our lives. She was studying hard at university, I was traveling the world teaching yoga. In a way, so many of our dreams had come true at the same time. I opened up about feeling exhausted, and when I did, Andrea said she’d been worried about me. “I know you’re on this high, traveling the world, doing the social media thing,” she said. “I just don’t want you to rush through life. Your body is telling you something. You’ve got to slow down, love.”
I knew she was right. I was suffering from neck pain on and off, and wasn’t sleeping well. “I know I’m going somewhere, and it’s somewhere good, but I feel like I’ve lost a piece of myself,” I said, suddenly tearing up. “And it’s weird because it’s all such a huge blessing and I feel guilty complaining about any of it. People stare at me all the time. I’m never alone, never still anymore. I can’t believe I’m saying it, but I miss what my life was.”
Andrea, ever the optimist, smiled. “But you have so much freedom now,” she said. “And influence! You can nudge people to do the right thing. That’s got to be pretty amazing, no? I think you should just focus more on that—helping people. You don’t need to rush across the whole world for that. Slow down. Figure out how you can be of true service. You won’t feel stressed when you’re aligned with that place.”
I knew she was right. I had such a beautiful life. I was about to marry the love of my life. I got to travel the world doing what I loved. I had been getting caught up in social media and in building my business, but I didn’t have a plan for any of it. Everything had just snowballed and now I felt like I was losing sight of what I was doing. I should just slow down and focus on doing good things for the world. She always had a way of making everything feel so easy.
After a few days together in San José, Andrea dropped me off at the bus station for the four-hour ride south to the tiny Pacific coast town of Uvita, where the festival was held. Envision is a music, yoga, and art festival in the jungles of Costa Rica. My friend Josh cofounded it years before and it had grown from a gathering of friends to more than seven thousand attendees over four days. I’d taught at the festival a couple of times, but that year I was the yoga headliner. The plan was that I would travel there a day ahead of Andrea while she stayed behind to complete a project for her architectural studies.
The bus was filled with people who were headed to the event from the airport; mostly new age–looking girls in bikini tops and yoga pants, and men covered in Buddha-inspired tattoos. From the moment I stepped on, people began asking to take photos with me. Right away I felt exposed. Normally, I hid behind Dennis during these times, but I was alone and didn’t quite know how to handle the attention. I put on a big smile the way I always did, and took selfies and chatted with everyone. As soon as I got a moment to myself I put on my headphones and listened to music for the rest of the trip.
Once we got there, I checked into a hostel. The room was small and bare, with two beds and a tiny bathroom. It looked clean enough and the air-conditioning worked, and that was all we really needed. The space felt cozier when I hung a few of my sarongs over the metal window frame.
It was late by the time I settled in, and my first class was early the next day. I took a photo of myself with the pink Costa Rican sky in the background and uploaded it to Instagram. I was feeling lonely and texted Andrea.
When are you coming?
She called right away, giggling. “Macha! Are you in our super-fancy hotel room? I’ve packed all my wigs and glitter and feathers and crazy clothing. We are going to have such a good time!” I couldn’t
help but smile. To Andrea, anything that wasn’t camping was fancy. I’d convinced her to get a room because no matter how many times I tried to enjoy it, camping just wasn’t for me. “Are you okay?” she asked. “Yes,” I said. “I feel better now, just tired, and my neck hurts, and it’s lonely here without you.”
Andrea turned serious. “I’ve been telling you, it’s not healthy to work this much,” she said. “You have to pause. Remember why you’re here.” I paused. “And why am I here?” I asked, half joking. “To make the world a better place! Duh!” Andrea said. My eyes welled up and I was smiling again. “Now go to bed,” she said. “I’m driving down first thing in the morning. Enjoy class! It’s going to go great.” I felt a lot better and fell asleep excited about our days ahead.
I woke up a little after sunrise. My neck pain was still bothering me, but I wouldn’t let it bring me down. I dressed for class and waited for my friend Laura to pick me up and drive me to the festival. Whatever I’d been feeling the night before was gone. I was in Costa Rica, about to spend a week with my besties! Life was good!
Laura and I checked in to the festival and boarded the chicken truck (yep!) that served as a shuttle between parking and the festival grounds. When we got there, I realized how big my class was, despite the scorching sun. It was by far the biggest class at the event. I felt the butterflies in my stomach that I always felt before stepping onstage to lead people through a practice, but reminded myself that no one was there for me. I was merely the guide. We were all there for the same reason: to feel, breathe, and connect.
To Love and Let Go Page 10