By conventional standards, it could be said that I wasted my time moving back to NYC. I came here to put some feelers out and realized it's not the right fit. In total, I will have spent 6 months coming to this conclusion and shifting gears to get back on track.

During most of that time, I taught two weekly yoga classes. It cost me more money to commute into the city than I earned from those classes. On a number of occasions, nobody showed up. On most occasions, there were 2-3 students. On rare occasions, I would have a group large enough to create a momentum for class.

While I made some money doing other things, I put my attention and energy behind building momentum for yogahour in NYC. After a few months, I decided it was not worth pursuing further. When it came time to cancel my classes, I did so without hesitation. And I felt relief.

However, something else happened. When I announced that I would be teaching my last classes, I felt the pangs of sadness... the feeling that I would actually miss teaching these classes. When I look objectively at the situation, there was nothing promising about continuing to teach these classes... it felt like trying to save a slowly sinking ship.

I taught my last class last night... and I chose the word "Endless" as my theme for class. I described the endless appreciation that I have for the path of yoga as a valuable investment of my time. I shared the endless love that I have for the people who show up to class with genuine enthusiasm. I reflected upon the things that I care deeply about.

A wise friend once told me, in regards to hiring good people, "You can't replace the give a fuck."

The same is true of pursuing a path of vocation.

Last night, I realized that I care deeply about teaching yoga. That despite the lack of external motivation and financial viability, I still cared deeply about each class.

I prepared last night's class in great detail... the sequence, the playlist, the theme. And as I reflected on this last class, it literally brought tears to my eyes to think about closing this chapter.

These last few months have been of immeasurable worth. They have reaffirmed the strength of my conviction to pursue the path I have chosen... to cultivate myself as a yoga teacher, to support students in connecting with practice and to pursue a vocation that I care deeply about.

I'll begin by saying that I was just on the verge of something BIG... I had the distinct feeling that I had recognized something so profoundly insightful, so essential to skillfully navigating through life's circumstances, that it felt like THE tipping point.

I remain on that verge, virtually no different than I was just moments ago... except that I feel a tiny bit closer to the endlessly profound wisdom of the great ones.

Yoga, as a physical practice, teaches me to focus my attention, with great detail, on what I'm doing with my physical body and why... through which I develop a greater understanding of my physical abilities and limitations. The result of practice yields a skillful focusing of my attention.

That skillful focusing of attention profoundly affects how I feel on the inside... it yields an empowering ability to notice and subsequently choose where I place my attention. As a result of practice, I notice that the quality of my attention is less distracted by the bullshit and able to dwell on the things that matter most.

That ability to skillfully focus my attention and choose where I place it -- THAT is profoundly insightful.

What gets your attention, grows... in other words, the grass is always greener where you water it.

Our attention is the most precious thing we have to give... it is the seed for everything of substance; thoughts, words, actions, results, belief systems, culture, society.

If you are to place your attention more skillfully on the things that matter most, just imagine how that could affect the day-to-day world YOU live in...

Stop imaging. Start practicing.

Over the past several weeks, I've been surrounded by really great community... and being in great company reminds me of what I value most.

Before I left Tucson last spring, I had a clear vision of where I was going and why. It was my primary AIM to establish a home for yogahour in NYC, to train new yogahour teachers and to use that community to launch a studio called The Anchor. That studio would be the flagship for a network of affiliate studios and the seed of a new yoga empire.

This big vision was propelled by my close relationship to yogahour and my experience building successful yoga brands in NYC. I believed, wholeheartedly, that I would radically change the entire landscape of yoga in the most accelerated city in the United States by making yoga more affordable and accessible without diluting quality or tradition. Never for a moment did I give equal weight or consideration to the way that I felt about living in NYC. That was a small price to pay for the prize of building an empire. 

People think it’s a privilege to make it in NYC. For me, it’s a trap...