We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Stacy Hemingway. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with stacy below.
Stacy, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Setting up an independent practice is a daunting endeavor. Can you talk to us about what it was like for you – what were some of the main steps, challenges, etc.
In 2014, I joined a nine-week program called “Design Your Life” with my friend and mentor, Elena Brower. It was an incredible journey where I explored 12 areas of my life and reflected on where I stood with my dreams. I delved deep into my work dream, imagining the perfect work role in my world. My big dream was to bring yoga into schools, as a mandatory class for all students across the country, and even the world! My kids were my biggest students and teachers as I started my yoga journey with my firstborn inside my belly. I knew I had a lot of work ahead of me. I had young children, and I hadn’t yet educated myself in teaching young children yoga. So, my first goal was to get certified to teach kids yoga. I then went on to get certified to teach teachers kids yoga. This certification added to my existing certifications and made me feel more confident for my next steps. During my kids’ yoga certification (CYRT), I added it to my EYRT500, which made me an educator of educators in Yoga Alliance’s credentials. I started using my new skills with a broader adolescent audience. In 2016, I started a yoga club at our local high school, including my two girls. Many of their friends joined, which was a huge blessing. I got to practice all the skills I’d learned working with kids, and they definitely taught me what they wanted to learn, which was very different from my trainings of elementary school-aged students. My second child was religious about attending yoga classes, as her older sister moved on to college. She would give me a thumbs up or thumbs down based on how silly I was being and if it was age-appropriate. With a combination of conversation, breathwork, movement, and meditation, the yoga club was a huge success. Over the four years, my goal was to meet more students and show them how yoga could improve their lives. The word started to spread, and kids are great at that! It was time to grow my work dream, aka the bigger vision. We applied to have yoga as an alternative to physical education within our local school district. After a few tries, I got another teacher on board, and yoga was approved just before COVID hit. Just prior to the pandemic I began to gather all my training and figured out what high school students needed to know about yoga in a school setting. In 2022, I formed Conscious Classroom, and in 2023, we published our yoga in school guidebook. But then, in 2023, we met with the head of CASEL, the governing body of social emotional learning, which had just been mandated in Washington State. He was kind but said we were too privileged, too white, and some people thought yoga had religious connections. He said, “It wasn’t going to work in mainstream America.” So, we quickly went back to the drawing board. I knew what we had already developed was worth it. We took the word yoga out of our content, removed the history and philosophy modules, and added the 5 competencies of CASEL to each lesson plan. Our focus had always been DEI and now it was evident. We created a brand-new offering for mindful movement in schools, and it was awesome! We also built out teacher professional development because when teachers are self-aware and regulated, students are open and ready to learn.
I’m driven by passion, and yoga was where my knowledge base was. If I had known more about the direction schools were moving in terms of SEL, I would have gone there first. As it turns out, what we offered in our guidebook turned out to be the foundation of our SEL curriculum. The philosophy of yoga is an ancient practice of looking inward at the self. SEL is the 20th-century version of self-reflection, self-growth, and building a strong character for the future.
For anyone starting something new, failure is a tough blow, but it’s also a gift to the mind-body experience. The prefrontal cortex is resilient and has the ability to reformulate, reregulate, reassess, and learn to build a better plan.
I’m the generator, a visionary, and ideas come to me. I share these ideas with others, and they spin off other ideas. Align yourself with an operations person. Partner with someone who knows how to hold everything together and keep you on track and accountable so that your business is functional, as you keep dreaming.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Hi there! My name is Stacy Hemingway. I married into a famous writers’ family, and I’m not exactly a writer myself. The Hemingway name can stir up some interesting conversations and judgments, especially since it’s associated with a Pulitzer Prize winner. Yes, we’re distantly related, and I’m aware of some of the mental health challenges that come with the Hemingway genes. Epigenetics is a real thing, and I’m here to help my immediate family and others, with a big desire to change the genetic code for our children and their children. Honestly, the only place where the name really matters is when making dinner reservations. I say that with a whole lot of tongue and cheek.
I started practicing yoga when I was pregnant with my first child in 1997. It was such a relief as I continued to coach ski racing to kids. I was athletic, and yoga was a perfect way to stay strong and connected through it all. Breath and meditation were lifesavers during childbirth. They helped me stay present and mindful during the whole experience. I’m so blessed to have two beautiful daughters who have made me a better person and teacher. After practicing yoga at my local studio in Bozeman, Montana, I jumped at the chance to attend a Teacher Training in 2003. That started the first 200-hour training, which has led to over 2,500 hours of training. I truly hope this journey of learning and self-discovery continues with me until the end.
In 2022, I started Conscious Classroom. It started as a yoga in school platform, with the goal of teaching students about yoga, its roots, and its multi-level approach to discovering who you are and what your purpose on the planet is. I also wanted students to receive 100 hours towards their own yoga certification. At the end of 2023, we shifted to a social-emotional platform as an alternative to PE. Including, Breathwork, Mindfulness and Meditation and Yoga for Health and PE. Now we see value on both realms, as we’ve created assessments for CEU for teachers and are working on assessments for students to complete our online training and receive their 200-hour yoga certification.
Our curriculum is now an evidence-based solution that helps teachers and students in classrooms or Physical Education/Wellness settings. Our goal is to improve social, emotional, and physical health outcomes through mindful movement. We believe it’s crucial to get the body moving and neurotransmitters flowing before we can ask students to connect and share their thoughts and feelings.
Our unique mindful movement approach uses the power of the mind-body connection through a curriculum designed to empower educators and students. We teach the art and science of self-regulation.
We help educators and students breathe well, become aware, regulate emotions, make responsible choices, increase motivation, and foster well-being.
Our curriculum design incorporates this philosophy, inviting students and educators to awaken their consciousness, build awareness, align their mind and body, and activate their learning.
What I’m most proud of with our work is how we’re changing classroom culture and lives. We’re empowering teachers to embrace their own social emotional wellness. When teachers practice self-care and are consciously connected, they’re ready to teach, and students are ready to learn. We’re helping students understand the brain and how they’re in charge of their thoughts and feelings by noticing where they’re placing their attention. Our thoughts create a frequency, and our feelings respond to this frequency. This cycle of thinking and feeling creates our personal reality of our experiences. This personal reality becomes our personality and way of being in the world. Change your thoughts, change your feelings, change your life! You’re in the driver’s seat and in charge of the path you choose to journey down. It all starts when you dare to dream.
Mindful movement for…
Every mind and every body!
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Our big meeting with the Casel director, Mark Greenberg, was a turning point for Conscious Classroom. Casel is the governing body of social, emotional, learning. His comments about our work were both insightful and tough to hear. He said we were too white, too privileged, and not diverse enough. He also said the word Yoga had too many religious connotations. These comments really shook me. Yes, I’m privileged in this life, and I’m passionate about giving back. I built this platform because it’s brought me back to myself. It’s given me a sense of belonging and a sense of my worth and purpose in the world. I’m just one small part of the whole, like a drop in the ocean or a grain of sand on the beach. I’m just one voice in the unity of all sound. Om or AUM. I’m part of the collective universe, and life is the gift I’ve been given. My teacher says I’m the point the universe is trying to make. So, I’m doing my best to keep moving forward and sharing the gifts I’ve been given. Conscious Classroom has always been about diversity, equity, and inclusion. Our rainbow imagery represents a lot of things. Our mascot, Prana, represents energy, and it speaks to the energy that lives within each of us. The word Yoga in Sanskrit means yoke, which also means union. Unity is what brings all of humanity together on a global scale. We’ve all been given a beautiful body and mind to help us experience the world and make sense of it. That was our mission at the time.
To make our platform work, it had to be different, all-encompassing. My ego was crushed, and I felt deflated. I was stuck in the river of change, treading water, and after almost three months, I needed a lifeline. I had been working with a business coach who was helping me with my leadership skills. I was reading all the entrepreneurial books I could get my hands on. Something had to change, shift, and relieve myself from my own suffering. My team was questioning our direction, their contributions, and their jobs. They were looking for their fearless leader to return. I was hiding and licking my wounds. Treading water was exhausting, and the river banks were too wide. I had to use what I knew in my soul to free myself. The pain was real, but the suffering was my doing. I moved my body subconsciously and consciously. I sat with myself in meditation until the banks of the river receded, the runoff from the trauma slowed, and I caught a glimpse of the other side of the bank. As the visionary I had to pull back, do my own work, and practice what I had written in the pages of our guidebook. So, I dreamed and came up with our new version of Conscious Classroom. We’ve incorporated social, emotional, learning into our lesson plans. We’re are now an alternative to PE, whose movement is based in Yoga. We offer professional development for teachers so they are confident in offering SEL in their classrooms in such a way that movement for the body creates connection in the brain. We are about to complete our Yoga teacher training certification for students to become certified to teach yoga learning from our original yoga guidebook. Today, I’m so grateful to Mr. Greenberg for his comments and pushing us to the point of change and evolution of who we are and what we offer to all students.
With all of the work I have done on myself, my evolution as a leader and creator, now I suffer less, make decisions quicker and use my practice of self awareness and self management to resurrect myself swifter when I am challenged.
Any advice for managing a team?
When I first thought about starting my business, I wanted to create something that would bring people together. I love the collaborative process of generating ideas, validating them, and helping others redirect their thinking if they get sidetracked. I didn’t want to build my business alone. I wanted to find other people with different perspectives and skills to work with. By combining our unique abilities, we could build a whole team that could function effectively, create, and serve. To become a great leader, I needed to expand my own understanding of what it takes to keep team morale high and keep our work moving forward. I started reading about successful leaders, their approaches, and the skills they use to keep their teams motivated and thriving. I’ve always believed in learning by doing, especially when it comes to being an entrepreneur. You have to be able to share your own experiences and journey with your team. It’s important to be able to formulate your own understanding of what you’ve learned based on your own experiences. Talking the talk and walking the walk is important. I spent a lot of time training and practicing yoga, but I wasn’t very good at business acumen or project management. This is where I had to grow. Passion and positivity are two great resources that can help you stay motivated and focused. It’s important for your team to always have a clear understanding of the big picture. It’s also important for them to practice self-reflection and self-assessment regularly. Build a functional environment with your team so they can see the big picture, listen to their inner voices, and follow the direction they need to take. Encourage them to feel the emotions that come with achieving their goals, and to imagine the success as if it has already happened. When you act like you already have what you’re trying to achieve, you’re more likely to achieve it. The more often you operate from this mindset, the more likely you are to achieve your dreams. Enthusiasm, encouragement, empathy, and effort are all qualities that can lift others. They can help your team overcome challenges and grow. These qualities must be part of you as a leader. You have to keep practicing and embodying these qualities because the impact you have on others ripples through everything you do and everything you connect with.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Consciousclassroom.com
- Instagram: Consciousclassroomyoga
- Facebook: Conscious Classroom
- Youtube: Conscious Classroom Yoga
Image Credits
ClaymoreMacMedia