We recently connected with Amy Love and have shared our conversation below.

Amy, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

How Full Bodied Yoga Was Born
Mid-pandemic, life cracked wide open. My mom was diagnosed with stage 4 cervical cancer, and I packed up my life in New York City, where I had spent the better part of a decade, and returned home to Portland, Oregon, with my then five-year-old child in hand. That next year, as a full-time caregiver as my mom transitioned from this life, and in that process, I healed so much of my own childhood. It was a very hard year, and grounded me in a way I hadn’t felt in years.

After she passed, I stood at a crossroads. I had a strong background in hotel sales. I’d worked my way up from a front desk agent at the Mallory Hotel in Portland to a Senior Sales Manager in San Francisco, landing in the top 3% of the company. It made sense to look for hotel jobs again. I interviewed. I didn’t get them. I even considered buying a house but couldn’t qualify in the neighborhoods where I wanted to live. I kept circling the question: What’s next?

At the same time, I started teaching yoga again at a local studio. And that’s when it hit me: I want to open my own yoga studio.

Why not me?

While in NYC, I had been part of Kula Yoga Project, one of the most brilliant and empowering spaces I’ve ever practiced in, led by some of the smartest women I’ve met. I wasn’t looking to replicate it, but I did want to create a space that could be my home away from home, especially now that I wasn’t in New York. I craved community. I craved connection. And I wanted a space that reflected what yoga has meant to me through all of life’s transitions: pregnancy, childbirth, perimenopause, grief, healing.

Over the years, my body has transformed again and again. And no matter the shape I was in (even at my smallest) I was still often the biggest student in the yoga room. That experience woke me up to something: most yoga spaces aren’t built with bodies like mine in mind. The “yoga body” stereotype is narrow, exclusionary, and frankly, a lie. I knew there had to be another way, one that actually celebrated the full spectrum of human bodies.

Working alongside my friend Janeen Ritson and a marketing firm, I defined the pillars of what would become Full Bodied Yoga: Community, Self-Love, and All Bodies.

This studio isn’t just a business. It’s a big, bold FU to the systems that try to keep us small, separate, and self-loathing. To the beauty standards rooted in white supremacy that tell us we’re never enough. To the wellness industry that has commodified yoga and handed it to skinny, affluent white women while sidelining everyone else.

Full Bodied Yoga is a way to come home to yourself. And doing that in community? That’s an act of resistance.

25 years ago, I was drinking almost every day, blacking out most nights, and I didn’t even know what an entrepreneur was. Now, I’m the founder of a yoga studio that welcomes all bodies, teaches self-love as a daily practice, and builds the kind of community I once longed for.

From the Mallory Hotel front desk, to corporate success, to Kula Yoga Project, to Full Bodied Yoga in the heart of Portland, I feel like I’m just getting started.

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?

My love story with yoga began in 2001 in Portland, OR, when I took my first class at the JLYC (now Jewel Yoga). I was immediately drawn to the transformative power of the practice. By 2013, I began teaching yoga and have since completed over 500 hours of teacher training under the guidance of Nikki Vilella and Schuyler Grant. I continue to study with Nikki Costello, an Iyengar Yoga teacher and founder of The Teacher’s Practice. These brilliant women and my own lived experiences laid the foundation for what would eventually become Full Bodied Yoga.

For years, I quietly held the dream of owning a studio, but it always felt just out of reach, until I found myself immersed in the community at Kula Yoga Project in New York City. There, I was able to step away from the corporate world, dive into self-discovery, and begin to see that my dream was, in fact, possible.

After becoming a mother and moving through the layered transitions of pregnancy, childbirth, and perimenopause, my body shifted in profound ways. Even at my smallest, I was still often the largest person in the room. And while I loved yoga, I rarely saw bodies like mine centered in the space. That realization lit a fire in me. I knew we needed something different, a yoga practice that makes space for all bodies. A practice that isn’t about shrinking, but expanding into who we truly are.

Full Bodied Yoga was born from that need. We are a woman-owned, business rooted in the values of community, self-love, and all bodies. Our studio offers movement, with alignment-focused and flow-based classes, slow and restorative offerings, femme recovery yoga, mat pilates and workshops that support students in reclaiming their wholeness. Everything we offer is designed to help folks feel more at home in their bodies, as they are.

We support students of all shapes, sizes, ages, races, and identities, including those who have been historically excluded from yoga spaces, because we know that self-acceptance and collective healing are acts of resistance. Full Bodied Yoga is more than a studio, it’s a sanctuary, a call to action, and a reminder that we’re not meant to go it alone.

I’m most proud of the community we’re building; one rooted in authenticity, courage, and care.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I’ve had to reinvent myself more times than I can count. Sometimes I joke that if Madonna can do it, why not me? But the truth is, my resilience wasn’t born from trendsetting, it was born from survival.

In my late teens, I fell into methamphetamine use. It was only six months, but in “meth years,” that’s a lifetime. I watched my world unravel fast. And then one day, I stopped cold turkey. I got a job working with school-aged kids, a moment of realignment that led me, oddly enough, to a front desk job at Portland’s historic Mallory Hotel. I carry sweet memories from that time, but I was still deeply struggling, so much so that I was arrested for my drunken aggressive behavior.

Eventually I moved to San Francisco and climbed the corporate ladder, but behind the scenes, I was drinking myself into blackout every weekend. Friday to Sunday was a blur. Monday, I’d show up for work like nothing had happened. Rinse and repeat for eight years.

It wasn’t until I moved to New York City that I stopped drinking, cold turkey, again. I was ready to choose myself. But instead, I found myself in an emotionally abusive relationship that stripped me of my financial security and tried to chip away at my sense of self.

The wake-up call came after giving birth and watching the 2016 election unfold. Something cracked open in me. I knew I had to start over. I moved out. Then the pandemic hit. I moved back in. That didn’t last long.

I came back to Portland, the place where it all began. Shortly after, my mom was diagnosed with stage 4 cervical cancer.

I’ve had more moments than I can count when I thought: “Wouldn’t it just be easier to disappear into the bottle again? To stop trying?” But then I remember who I am. I am all of the things that tried to take me down, and none of them at the same time. I am the strength of my ancestors. I am the love of the family that has lifted me. And I am the fire in my own belly that refuses to go out.

This is the spirit I bring to Full Bodied Yoga. A space for people who’ve had to start over, people who are still finding their way, people who want to feel whole, even when the world has told them they’re too much or not enough. It’s not just about yoga. It’s about reclaiming yourself.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

A lesson I had to unlearn? That I needed to tone myself down to be taken seriously.

In the corporate hotel world, they wanted a polished version of me. Sure, maybe I was swearing at the front desk (okay, definitely), but the bigger issue was that I was a truth teller in a place that only wanted surface-level smiles and scripted interactions. I learned to dim, to water myself down, to squeeze into a mold that was never meant for me. And for a while, I tried. I played the part. But it chipped away at me.

When I left that world and found myself at Lululemon, still corporate, but a different culture, I had a shock. Suddenly, they wanted me to speak my truth. To tell my story. To share what got me here. It was a complete 180. I realized I had been carrying this belief that I had to leave parts of myself at the door to succeed. But the truth is, my story is my strength. My voice is valid exactly as it is. Unfiltered, full-volume, and real.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.fullbodiedyogapdx.com
• Instagram: @fullbodiedyogapdx
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?viewas=100000686899395&id=100084058936255
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/full-bodied-yoga/?viewAsMember=true