We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jen Yuhas a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Jen thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Before we get into specifics, let’s talk about success more generally. What do you think it takes to be successful?

Understanding what it takes to be successful means defining what success looks like on my terms. Understanding my core values, and how I want to contribute to the world underscores my definition of success. My definition of success is so much more nuanced than the arbitrary ways in which the world measures success. Clarity around my personal values amplifies what is authentic and true in my head and my heart. From this place, every thought, word, action and reaction is measured against what is true success for me. Life, work and relationship decisions become less complicated when the definition is clear. I am better able to move from an intuitive place of honest feedback from my own heart rather than the often cloudy and misaligned feedback from the world.

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.

Jen took her very first yoga class in the winter of 1999 and was immediately smitten. Since then, Jen has devoted her life to studentship and teaching, exploring the various facets of the practice with extraordinary teachers. Her dynamic and creative sequencing compliments the richness of the ancient yogic philosophy so that folks can contemplate the teachings in the context of their everyday, modern lives. Her hope is that students walk off the mat feeling energized, empowered and at ease.

Teaching now for 15 years, the practice continues to become even more relevant to Jen with each passing year. She wants people to know that there is a place for everyone on the yoga mat. There is no other system like the 8-limbed path of yoga that more effectively builds functional and mental strength and longevity, energy and ease, and reveals our individual greatest potential and collective possibility. When practiced regularly, the totality of each person comes forth with authenticity and grace, and ripples out into the world.

Prior to teaching yoga full time, Jen was a senior executive for a worldwide non-profit organization for 15 years. In that role, she worked extensively with community stakeholders at the C-suite level, and served as a national trainer for the organization developing and facilitating various functional training workshops across the country.

When not teaching, Jen enjoys travel, cooking, running and reading.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

As a young woman growing up in he 80s + 90s, the messages and lessons that I learned were that I had to be tough and hard to be successful: wear your hair short, severe shoulder-pads in your jackets, and be sure to wear bland, nondescript suits to be taken seriously in the workplace. Be strong and harsh. Force the goals. Hustle and don’t show your heart, definitely not your weaknesses. And whatever you do, don’t let them see the real, authentic you.

Alongside these messages at the tender age of 13, my parents divorced. I was suddenly thrust into a very adult role helping my mother manage the house, paying the bills, and even staying home from school to clean houses for her when she was sick so we had enough money to survive. These experiences, while teaching me how to be independent, self-sufficient and driven also made me even more tough, hard and cold.

It has taken years, a lot of mistakes and a ton of self-study to learn that I can be both strong and soft. That I can come forth authentically with my heart and still be successful. I had to learn that it doesn’t have to be hustle and grind, but rather flow and ease. Allowing for the rise and fall of life without gripping onto control is how to best navigate not only the workplace but also, and more importantly each and every relationship – work and otherwise. Moving from an intuitive, heart-centered place and trusting the flow of life has softened my rough edges, and hopefully made me more more kind and compassionate.

How’d you meet your business partner?

Meeting my business partner, Madonna McManus changed the trajectory of my life forever more. 6 months prior to moving to Houston, I went to a yoga class taught by Madonna. Immediately after practice, she asked me if I was a yoga teacher. I said yes. She then asked where I taught yoga and I told her that at the present, I was teaching in Cleveland, Ohio but was moving to Houston in 6 months. She shared her business card, and told me to reach out when I moved.

8 months later, I started working with Madonna at another studio in Houston. I knew from the very moment we started working together that there was something special about her. Madonna’s work ethic is like none other. She maintains a delicate balance of compassion and swift business rationale. She is a role model for me in fairness, contentment, creativity and data. She always backs my intuitive sense with the hard data. She chooses generosity every time, and presents a depth of kind-hearted strength that I have never before experienced. She allows herself to be vulnerable while maintaining a dedication to the greater good.

When she told me she was leaving the studio we were both teaching at to open her own studio, I asked her if she had a business partner. She said no. I asked her if she wanted a business partner. She said: let’s talk. A week later over chips and salsa in a Tex-Mex restaurant on a random Wednesday afternoon, we hatched our plan and The Atrium Yoga Studio was born.

Nothing more than this experience has reinforced my trust in dharma. Everything happens exactly as it should.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.theatriumyogastudio.com
• Instagram: jenniferyuhas
• Linkedin: Jennifer Yuhas
• Youtube: The Atrium Yoga Studio
• Yelp: The Atrium Yoga Studio
• Other: Curious about private yoga sessions? Contact Jen at [email protected]