Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Krista Shirley. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Krista, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?

I’ve always been a bit of a risk taker. My dad died when I was eight and it taught me at a very early age that life is precious and you never know if tomorrow will come, so be sure to make the most of every single moment. I feel that I’ve taken many different types of risks over the last 30 years, but the biggest one of all was on myself. In 2019 my suprascapular nerve was severed in my left shoulder. I was crippled with pain and had to endure numerous surgeries to try and fix the problem, but to no avail. Over the course of two years, and during Covid-19, I endured eight surgeries and lost absolutely everything from use of my left limb, my career, my business, my inner light and my belief in myself. The last surgery, in April 2020, was a nerve decompression turned nerve transfer surgery that took a nerve powering my mid and lower trapezius and transferred it to my left shoulder to try and get some function back in my left rotator cuff. It was so difficult to wrap my head around the fact that I’d lost use of one muscle in the hopes of getting some use back in another. And what was worse, I didn’t know that would happen going into the surgery and when I woke up I was told I’d have to wait a year to SEE if the surgery was successful.

Fast forward to April 2021 when we did the next nerve study, we learned the surgery had not been successful and I lost my mid and lower trapezius and got no nerve function in my supraspinatus or infraspinatus. It was really quite devastating. To make matters much worse, my physical therapist released me from care and told me he couldn’t help me and I needed to find an occupational therapist to learn how to live with my disability, to file for disability and to come to terms with my life as it was. I’ll never forget that day…I had been fighting and fighting and fighting to get better so I could regain use of my left limb, rebuild my yoga career and studio, to get back to my dedicated yoga practice. And in that moment I felt like I was given a choice to just give up. In that moment, I thought to myself, “Krista, here is your chance to give up. You can give up now..” But I didn’t want to give up. I wanted my old life back. I wanted use of my limb again. I wanted my career back. I wanted my yoga community back.

When I left my physical therapists office, I had some very difficult decisions to make. My yoga studio had suffered tremendously from Covid-19 and my scant presence through all my surgeries. It was hemorrhaging debt and I was physically too broken to try and rebuild the studio until I’d found a way to rebuild my body. With tremendous sadness and fear, I closed the studio and dedicated myself to figuring out how to heal my body on my own. I truly believed I could somehow, someway, regain function and use of my left limb, rebuild my body and my yoga practice, and eventually rebuild my yoga career and community.

I spent the rest of 2021 wholly dedicated to physical therapy, meditation and pranayama. Each day I’d blindfold myself and meditate for 45 minutes. Then, I would rehearse doing my yoga practice in my mind, with my eyes closed. After several months, I took my blindfold and my body to my yoga mat and with both hands clasped together, began slowly working on sun salutations. In time I was able to do more and more with less help from my right hand. As the weeks passed I continued to see progress thanks to my meditation, modified yoga practice and physical therapy with a very unique PT.

I went into even more debt over the course of 2021, but I KNEW if I took the chance on myself, defy all odds and rebuild my body, I could and would be able to rebuild my career and repay all debts. It was terrifying, all of it….When thoughts arose that made me fearful of my ability to succeed, I’d push them away with positive thoughts about my progress. When I’d get down about why this happened to me and what I’d lost, I’d replace it with hope and keep forging ahead.

Day by day, week by week, I saw tiny improvements in my physical function. And I just kept going. A year later I was able to life my arm over my head, among other things. I was able to do fully primary series ashtanga yoga with some modifications.
And I was slowly taking on clients again and teaching sporadically. I was nowhere near healed but well on my way. By June I was functional enough to resume working with a more steam lined physical therapist and by July I ventured back into Ashtanga’s second series. I also re-started my daily morning yoga program as a first step to rebuild my yoga community.

Even though I was told that whatever function I had at 18 months post op was what I’d have for the rest of my life, I took a risk on myself to prove that I could be an outlier and regain full function and use of my limb. It is nearly three years now since the nerve transfer surgery. While I am not 100% and will forever live without nerve function in a few muscles, I’ve retrained my brain and body to re-route nerve and muscle function to preform various movements and I am far from done! I believe in the power of the human mind and body and know that with faith, hard work and a goal, anything is possible!

I’m glad I took the risk on myself. I’m glad I faced fears, insecurities, setbacks head on. I’m glad I learned all the lessons afforded to me along the way. And today I’m glad I am back to a rewarding yoga practice, yoga career, yoga community and purposeful life. Never be afraid to take a risk on something you care deeply about. And never give up on yourself.

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 found yoga during my junior year of college. I’d just returned from a semester abroad. I was forever changed by that experience and yearned for something more. I stumbled into a modified Ashtanga Yoga Primary Series yoga class at my local gym and immediately fell in love with the practice. Once I graduated from college I registered for my first teacher training in Chicago, followed by a month long training in Thailand later that year. And after that, I began teaching yoga full time. A few years later I began making my yearly trips to Mysore, India to study at the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute. I would teach all year and then travel to India to study; return home broke and do it all over again. And then in 2009 I was granted level II authorization to teach Ashtanga yoga and my teacher asked me to go home and open a yoga shala and offer traditional mysore style yoga classes. So I did! And the rest is history.

I’ve owned and managed The Yoga Shala in Winter Park, Florida since 2009. In 2010 I began teaching national workshops, in 2011 I created a yoga curriculum for elementary-high school students, and have since created programs, courses, and trainings for corporate clients, national and international sports teams and more. I continue to run my yoga shala, travel monthly to teach national and international workshops, offer a yearly international yoga retreat, work with corporate and private clients and run my youtube channel www.youtube.com/@yogawithkrista.

I offer people from all walks of life a solution to their health and wellness goals. I teach people the practice of Ashtanga Yoga and help them learn how to make the practice a true part of their lifestyle. Through my work, people lose weight, learn how to manage their stress naturally, sleep better, reduce anxiety and so much more.

While most yoga studios offer a wide variety of different yoga styles under one roof, The Yoga Shala exclusively offers Mysore style Ashtanga yoga and all of my workshops and courses center around this yoga method. I do this because I truly believe Mysore Style Ashtanga Yoga is the safest and most effective way to learn and practice yoga. I also firmly believe it is really important for students to commit to one yoga style and slowly go deeper in that style. Staying broad and hoping from style to style, class to class can be confusing for students and ultimately really limit how much they can grow in their practice.

I am really proud of my level II authorization. It is a prestigious honor I get to share with a small few hundred people around the globe. It means the world to me to be part of a lineage that has existed for many thousands of years. I am proud to be a torch bearer for the practice of Ashtanga yoga to help ensure its teachings are not diluted over time. Ashtanga yoga is a demanding practice because it does require a true commitment to yourself to get to your mat and face yourself everyday. It is structured and it is challenging, but it is truly the best thing you can do for your body, mind and soul.

I want people to know that Ashtanga Yoga is for anyone and not to be intimidated by photos of advanced practitioners doing extremely difficult poses. As my late teacher used to say, “Anyone can practice. Young man can practice. Old man can practice. Very old man can practice. Man who is sick, he can practice. Man who doesn’t have strength can practice. Except lazy people; lazy people can’t practice Ashtanga yoga.” My health is truly my wealth and I want people to dedicate themselves to taking accountability of their health and wellness to enjoy each and everyday they have on this earth to the fullest.

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

From 2009-2019 I had a thriving yoga business. I enjoyed tremendous success with my brick and mortar studio and the classes, workshops and courses we offered. My national workshops and international retreats skyrocketed from 2012-2019 and I really was at the very height of my career….Until I had a routine shoulder surgery that forever changed my life. In April of 2019 I had shoulder surgery and it gave me an infection. I then faced revision surgery. The revision surgery accidentally severed my suprascapular nerve and I lost complete function in my left rotator cuff. From April 2019-April 2021 I was barely at my yoga studio, barely teaching, and had to cancel all workshops and retreats. I had to focus 100% on healing my body and managing the unbearable nerve pain that electrified my body 24 hours a day.

In the midst of my own medical tragedy, Covid-19 struck the globe, shutting down all businesses everywhere. Covid started early in my medical nightmare and I really thought I’d heal quickly and get back to teaching. I kept telling myself I’d be able to rebuild once I was healthy again…But that day of healing seemed to never come. I had to make so many hard decisions during that period in my life. My landlord at the time was unwilling to compromise on rent during the shutdown and I was forced to downsize and move my studio to a smaller location during the lockdown in Florida, while in a sling! But once we reopened in the new location, we had so very few students coming to classes. And I continued to be more absent than present at the shala as I had to face eight surgeries from April 2019-June 2020. It was truly the darkest period of my life.

My last surgery was supposed to be a nerve decompression surgery..But that’s the surgery the discovered my suprascapular nerve had been severed in 2019 and the surgeon had to make a game time decision and perform a spinal accessory nerve transfer to my suprascapular notch. When I woke up from that surgery I no longer had use of my mid and lower trapezius and I was told I to wait a year to see if my nerve regenerated in my left shoulder. So I took out a sizable SBA loan and tried to keep the yoga shala alive while I had one arm I couldn’t use and a deeply hurting yoga studio.

Fast forward to April 2021, the nerve study showed us my nerve transfer had NOT been successful. I was told to get on disability and dismissed from care by my physical therapist. He told me he couldn’t help me, I needed to find an occupational therapist to learn how to live with my disability. That day I had to make the hardest decision of my life so far…I had to close The Yoga Shala.

I closed the doors at the end of that month and gave myself to the end of the year to devote myself to rehab and physical therapy to defy the odds and regain function in my broken limb. To get by, I did a lot of audio narration and other odd jobs that didn’t require me to use my left limb. And that was a great experience for me. It not only showed me how resourceful and resilient I was, but it gave me so many new skills and inspired me to revive my youtube channel.

A few months later I starting crawling back to my mat, doing whatever I could with my own practice. In January of 2022 I began teaching one class, one day a week. I also slowly started taking some private clients again. By April of 2022 I started doing a few national workshops again and by the summer I was functional enough and strong enough to resume running a daily morning mysore yoga program. But I was not in a financial position to rent a space and do a buildout. I also didn’t want to do things the same this time around. I knew from running my studio for 12 years that I didn’t love managing staff but also knew I could not carry the cost of rent on my morning class alone.

I got creative and decided to rent time from a birthing center in the early mornings to run my morning yoga program. While a big part of me wanted to have my own dedicated space again, I knew I had to do things differently this time and it has been one of the best decisions I’ve made! The space is perfect for my program, it has amazing energy, it has a kitchen and a shower and it’s very affordable for me. It’s really been a perfect solution for my needs. And when the day arrives that I outgrow that space, I hope to have even more function and strength in my left limb.

2022 was truly a year of starting over for me, in every possible way. It was a tremendous amount of work on all fronts, but boy oh boy has it paid off. My yoga program is thriving and growing by the day, I’m booked with private clients, back to doing national workshops, corporate yoga events and classes, and my youtube channel keeps me very busy. I’m back on top of my career, I’m making more money than I was in 2019, and I’m enjoying my life and my work more than ever before.

I can’t say that I am happy about my medical tragedy, because I am not. I’d give almost anything to have full function and use of my left limb. BUT, the silver lining is that tragedy forced me to pivot in my business, my career and my life; all for the better.

We’d love to hear your thoughts about selling platforms like Amazon/Etsy vs selling on your own site.

I have my yoga studio, the yoga shala and my product line, Nysa by Olotita. I’ll break them both down from a service perspective and products perspective.

For my yoga studio, I have my own dedicated website www.theyogashala.org, and I use Yottled to handle my class registrations and payments. It’s become the simplest, most cost effective way to handle my services. My website platform offers and online store, but it does not offer a way for my clients to register for classes, private sessions or workshops. From 2009-2021 I used mindbody online software but it was super costly per month, it was super complicated, and it required me to have a payment processor in addition to their software. What’s more, it was time intensive for clients too. With the chance to start over and do things differently, I made changes to every aspect of my business and this is one I’m proudest of because it has simplified my life tremendously.

For my product line, I have my own dedicated website www.olotita.com/nysa with an online store where I do sell my products. However, I also take advantage of the sales channels offered by Amazon, eBay and Etsy. I do not sell a tremendous amount of product through amazon, Etsy or eBay but love having those additional channels for people to potentially find my products. I also don’t mind clicking a few buttons to run a few extra reports for those sales channels. I believe ecommerce is an aspect of business that is going to be different for everyone. I would suggest that new business’ really spend time researching all the options out there that are potential solutions for their business needs to ensure the best tool for their unique needs.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.theyogashala.org and www.olotita.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/theyogashala_ www.instagram.com/kristashirleyyoga. www.instagram.com/nysa_by_olotita
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/theyogashala. www.facebook.com/thenysamovement. www.facebook.com/kristashirleyyoga
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristashirley/
• Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/kristayogini
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@yogawithkrista
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-yoga-shala-winter-park-4

Image Credits
Cole Howard Jessica Gilbreath Jeff Thomas