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

Sophia, appreciate you joining us today. One of our favorite things to hear about is stories around the nicest thing someone has done for someone else – what’s the nicest thing someone has ever done for you?

I was working as the Human Resources Generalist for a Global Imaging company headquarters, a Xerox company. It was a very demanding position, working with multiple locations, acquisitions, benefits administration and audit, and labor relations issues. My goal was to save enough funds while working there, to afford a trip to Jamaica with my husband, as our 10 year anniversary. Sadly, few months into my employment, my mother-in-law was diagnosed with “mysterious” cancer, after having a hip surgery. It was extremely challenging to raise 3 children all in elementary school, care for my mother-in-law, who lived with us, work a full time job, and still work my second job at the health club as a personal trainer. My schedule was loaded: 5 am client, 5:30 am group training, then racing home to get ready for work and get my 3 children ready for school. Drive kids to school, work until 5 pm, race back to the gym for 5:30 pm group training class, followed by personal training clients until 8:30 pm. I remember driving and changing into my gym clothes on a busy Dale Mabry Blvd, praying for my own safety, but knowing that I am going to make it. A few month into this lifestyle, where I held two jobs – HR generalist and personal and group trainer, my manager called me to discuss my career progression within the company. She expressed her desire to “groom” me for promotion within the company and asked if I was interested in moving up. Feeling how I am already extremely overwhelmed, I instinctively didn’t jump at the opportunity to say “YES”. Instead, I responded with “I will think about it”. Several months passed and I was making it work. Things were getting impossible to hold together. Radiation treatments and chemo therapy took a lot. Emotionally, I felt numb and went through the motions. On the day of my anniversary, December 27, my manager called me to her office and said: “You have lost that spark in your eye, when I first interviewed you. I can sense that you are destined for better and bigger things than this job offers you. I don’t want to diminish your potential here, your influence on other people’s lives. I am firing you with a small severance package to help you at this time, because I know you have a lot going on right now”. I was in tears because I was at the end of my rope, and my manager saw it. No matter how hard I tried to hold it all together, to not let anyone down, I was on a verge of a burn out. She, lovingly liberated me and at the same time financially helped me to transition from corporate world to creating my own wellness business. That was the kindest thing.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My journey from Corporate world into the world of fitness began in 2008. After a company health screening, I was informed that I had a high body fat percentage which put me into a category of obese. Those words were the words that awakened me from my 2 year- post pregnancy period. I didn’t have any gyms near by and with 3 small children, it was a challenge to make time for myself on a daily. I hired a personal trainer who was willing to train me at my house. She brought her portable equipment, bands and with my children sitting nearby and counting my reps, I trained for 45 min under her guidance. It felt like I was learning a whole other language: row, lunges, squats, curtsy lunges. I felt clumsy and uncoordinated. It took almost a year to develop my core strength, after having 2 caesarian sections. A few month after personal training, I signed up for boot camps, lead by my trainer. It was brutal at first. I couldn’t keep up with many others. But I persisted. The boot camp was at 5:30 am, and after a few months, I joined the evening one as well at 7:30 pm. Then, I discovered Zumba, which I totally didn’t consider as working out, but dancing with sweat pants on and dripping sweat all over the studio floor. Again, it was new to me and I felt uncoordinated and slow. I persisted because I loved and enjoyed the music so much. The main thing was to keep going. My goal with hiring a trainer was not to lose weight and drop 2 dress sizes, but to learn to love exercising. I had no end date to this, until I felt like I could not exist without exercising. That day came 2 years later, after I first started. I began to notice how I felt after training. I was looking forward to it. And luck would have it, a new gym for women opened up just less than 2 miles from my house. Moreover, it had a day care, where I could leave my children for up to an hour. My children started elementary school and I was laid off from my job. I started going to this gym every morning and every day, until one day, a manager asked me if I wanted to work there. I wasn’t a certified trainer yet. That’s how it started. I got the personal trainer job before I got my certification. Life has been a blessing ever since. From studying for my Group and Personal trainer certification, I also, took multiple courses for TRX (Total Resistance Exercise) training that helped with rehabilitation and post injury for some of senior clients. Later on, I became a CrossFit coach. I enjoyed having a variety of training modalities and my clients enjoyed that as well and often mentioned to me that it was never a boring routine. Simultaneously, about 1 year since I started training, I began to focus on my nutrition. It was a gradual but steady uphill climb to learn and change the way I nourished my body. I began to separate my cooking from everybody else’s in my family. I switched to organic food, and then gradually moved the entire family to healthy eating as well. My children weren’t pleased when I stopped buying mac’n cheese for them, or CapriSun drinks. But again, despite their tantrums, I persisted, and explained that what they are used to consuming was not good for them and as their momma, I refuse to “poison” their young growing bodies since I now knew and could better understand the ingredients list. I no longer purchased “easy to cook” meals. I dedicated two days in a week for prepping food in advance. So the journey continued. The body was getting fitter and stronger. The healthy nutrition helped purify and burn off many of the old patterns. The last frontier was the mind. That’s where I began to practice yoga. I sampled all types of yoga, until I found Kundalini Yoga, which entirely captivated me whole: body, mind, and heart. I consistently took Kundalini Yoga class once a week for over a year and a half. Then I decided to become a yoga teacher of this practice. I completed my training RYT200 and went on to complete RYT500.
As it stands today, I run my own business called FitforBliss Wellness Sanctuary. The mission here is to help people come to their own optimal health and well being through education, empowerment, support and practice. Here I offer physical training for all phases of life, educate clients on proper nutrition based on their body and lifestyle according to Ayurveda, and I help them find their inner strength and wisdom through the practice of Kundalini Yoga. Even though my own journey revealed one aspect of health and wellness at a time, I believe to maximize on our time and come up with the most effective plan, we need to look at it all: body, mind, heart, and soul.

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

I was raised from a very early age in a country where women serve men. I was taught that as a woman, my primary responsibility would be taking care of my family: husband, children, and house. It was how I was raised. The image of a good wife consisted of a clean and tidy house, delicious meal prepared from scratch, neat looking children, and myself looking refreshed and ready to serve, without ever getting tired. Having a full time job and 3 small children, I felt like a complete failure because this ideal image was so far out of my reach. I could only manage one at a time: either it’s a clean house, but really only for a little bit, until the kids got to play again. Or, it could be a messy house, but I managed to cool some pasta with meat sauce. I could never do it all. It was a life of serving everyone and all, except tending to my own needs. I was the very last on my to do list. There was never time for ME, my peace, my alone time, my bath time. The lesson I learned, through numerous fights because of my own inner anger and projecting it outwards onto my husband or children, is that it was an old programming that I was holding on to so tightly. Letting go of that belief, felt like a failure. However, I realized that without taking care of myself first, and running on empty created a mother and a wife that I didn’t like to be. I wanted to be a loving and patient mom, not high strung and on edge. That was the hardest thing to change – letting go of control and changing my priorities. Making myself the focus of the day, giving myself permission to not cook, to not clean, if the energy wasn’t there, but instead going for a walk alone. That lesson became the foundation of my business – helping women, working moms, single moms learn to prioritize their health and well being first.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

Being true to what I believed and being transparent in my own journey, struggles, and finding a way through trial and error. I walk the talk. Everything I do, I also practice. I am the embodiment of my lifestyle that I teach. I am doing me not because someone is watching, but because it’s important to me. I do it all for me. I choose to share it with others, not because it will work for them too, but simply helping them find their own way. It takes tremendous discipline to stay consistent, and I sure had my share of slip ups and long periods of where I took a break from either working out intensively or doing my yoga practice. But even when on a “break” where was a thread of connection. Maybe it was a walk around the neighborhood, or may be it was a practice of simply chanting my favorite mantra. There was always some kind of thread of staying connected to my own true Essence, So, I believe it is less about what I say and teach, but more about what I do and how I live my life that serves me and inspires others.

Contact Info:

• Website: fitforbliss33.wixsite.com/fitforbliss
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fitforbliss44/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063679463330
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/KundaliniYogaFitForBlisswithSachDharamKaur
• Other: [email protected]