We recently connected with Daniela Kent and have shared our conversation below.

Daniela, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear stories from your time in school/training/etc.

Learning yoga is a lifelong practice, it’s a process of unlearning and releasing habits and ways and thinking, speaking, and acting as it is about learning new techniques for moving, breathing, or meditating. Even though I have been teaching yoga in some capacity for over a decade, I am still and will always be a student of the practice. I am always learning from others. One lesson that I’ve learned through my study of yoga and particularly from listening to lectures of Swami Tattwamayananda of the Vedanta Society of San Fransisco is that while we are all striving to live our best lives, what “best” means is different for everyone. Best is subjective, not objective. Yes, there are common goals and practices (i.e. non-harm, truthfulness. moderation, etc.) but how those things show up in our lives will be different. I try to remember this whenever I teach yoga: the tools are more or less the same (we all have a body, a mind, a spirit), but what we build with those tools will look different.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

I think the three words that best describe me as both a person and a yoga teacher are talkative, curious, and passionate. I’m the daughter of a Spanish mother and American father. For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by how things come (or don’t come) to be. My mind has almost always been preoccupied with the question: why are we the way we are? And, how do we become who we are?

These questions, albeit subconsciously, led me to study Literatures of the World with an emphasis in Cultural Studies at the University of California, San Diego. UCSD is also where I completed my first yoga teacher training in 2010. What I began to learn there and continue to learn daily in my yoga practice, is that we are the way we are—we become who we are— because of how we think, speak, and act.

I find this beautiful, because it means that as humans we are invited by our very existence to create a way of being in the universe. The ideas we circulate, the skills and tools we use to communicate, and the ways we choose to show up for ourselves and our communities, both personally and collectively, can always shift and change if we do the necessary work. That work—the work of engaging with how we think, speak, and act in real life—that’s yoga practice.

And because each of us has different work to do, we each have a different flavor, expression, and experience of yoga practice. Some parts of our yoga practice are personal, things only we can do for ourselves. Other parts of yoga practice are collective, grounded in sharing our own unique expertise, insights, skills, and talents. Our collective yoga practice allows us to inspire each other, support each other, learn from each other, and teach each other.

My offering to collective yoga practice is an approach I call Yoga IRL, which aims to present yoga as an accessible practice that promotes holistic health and well-being by integrating the physical, energetic, mental, emotional, and spiritual needs of both individuals and communities. I pull from a wide variety of techniques and practices to tailor each class to a specific idea or theme that each practitioner can adopt and practice in their own unique way.

That being said, I know I am not the right teacher for everyone, and Yoga IRL is not an authentic fit for every yoga practitioner. If my approach isn’t for you, I hope you know there are so many amazing yoga teachers and approaches out there so keep searching until you find the one for you.

If you do choose to join the Yoga IRL community, know that your voice, insight, expertise, and experiences are important, and I look forward to dialoguing with you and supporting you in anyway I can. If you are interested in seeing what I have to offer, check out Yoga IRL at www.yogairl.org, @yoga.irl.daniela.kent on Instagram, and Yoga IRL with Daniela Kent on Facebook.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

COVID-19 hit the yoga studio world hard. So much about teaching yoga is about sharing energy and space with people. At first, I thought that there was no way to do that online, and to be honest, I still think there is nothing quite like being in-person and sharing space and energy in that way. However, I found that you can also share space and energy through an online community, too. I love using Patreon as a platform and using tools like Vimeo, Zoom, and Squarespace to connect with people in a way that is fully and authentically me. Now, I can connect with yoga practitioners all over the country (and even world), and that feels great, too. I still teach in person, but I have expanded my teaching to incorporate a lot more online options as well.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

I think one of the biggest lessons I had to unlearn is the idea that “full-time” = success. I used to be a full-time yoga teacher, and it was such a hustle. When I was was in my 20s, that hustle felt just fine, but as I got older (and more skillful) I found that I was often being asked to work for unfair pay. I used to accept unfair pay and just hustle hard because then I could claim that I was a “full-time” yoga teacher and that meant I was “successful.” I also found myself having to compromise my teaching in ways that felt increasingly unauthentic to fit a certain demand placed on me by the market. One day I realized that some things just aren’t worth compromising, and I decided I would be a better yoga teacher if I allowed myself to open to my mind to other sources of income. Eventually, I begin teaching online Spanish classes and online academic tutoring so that I could teach yoga in a way that felt honest and authentic to me, and so I would not have to hustle so hard to make ends meet. I love yoga just as much, and am probably the best I’ve ever been as a teacher, but I had to become a part-time yoga teacher to do that.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.yogairl.org
• Instagram: @yoga.irl.daniela.kent
• Facebook: Yoga IRL with Daniela Kent
• Linkedin: Daniela Kent
• Yelp: Yoga IRL with Daniela Kent

Image Credits
Brandon Plantz Yasmin Hakim