We were lucky to catch up with Tiffany Pridgen recently and have shared our conversation below.

Tiffany, 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.

When my yoga studio closed in 2021, it felt like someone quietly pulled the floor out from under my life.

I had poured so much heart into that space, not just teaching classes, but building community, watching people change, seeing them walk out taller, calmer, more themselves. So when it ended, there was grief, and also this disorienting question that a lot of business owners face in silence: Okay, who am I now?

I pivoted into yoga teacher trainings with a partner, and for a while, that gave me structure and momentum. But then my partner moved, and suddenly I was staring at the yoga business alone. I was lost. Not in a dramatic, movie-scene way, but more like the slow kind of lost where you keep moving, but you don’t know what you’re moving toward anymore.

Around that same time, the deeper truth that I had been trying to “be practical” about kept getting louder, I didn’t want to build a yoga career that only worked on paper. I wanted a business that could fund a beautiful life, especially for my horses.

If you’re a horse person, you already know this, but horses aren’t a hobby you squeeze into the leftovers of your life. If you want to do it at a high level, it takes time, presence, care, and yes, it takes money. And yet the yoga industry often carries this unspoken belief that yoga teachers shouldn’t expect financial success; that we should be happy teaching “for the experience” because we love yoga so much.

I could no longer accept that.

Not because I’m driven by money for the sake of money, but because I’m driven by the life that becomes possible when your work is sustainable. I wanted to live in integrity: to teach yoga in a way that honors its depth and honors the reality that passion still needs a foundation.

The logic of my yoga for equestrians business idea clicked when I stopped trying to market yoga as “just a class” and started naming what I had witnessed for years – that yoga changes people on a deep level. It change your nervous system. It changes confidence. It changes the way you breathe under pressure, how you recover from stress, how you show up in your body and in your relationships.

Then I met my yoga business mentor, Angelica Govaert, and that became a turning point for my business. She helped me translate what I already knew in my bones into something that could actually be communicated and valued in the marketplace. I wasn’t selling movement. I was offering transformation, and I finally learned how to speak that clearly, without apologizing for charging my worth.

Financially, I was at a crossroads: either put my energy back into a “real job” or commit fully to building a business model that could actually support me and my dreams. So I made a very specific pivot in my business and I launched an online yoga business working exclusively with equestrian athletes.

That’s when everything aligned.

Riders are some of the most dedicated, high-performing, big-hearted athletes I’ve ever met, and they’re often carrying a ton of invisible stress around perfectionism, pressure, fear of messing up, the emotional responsibility of being a good partner to an animal with its own mind and nervous system. Yoga for them isn’t a trendy add-on. It becomes a performance tool, a mindset practice, and a way to build the kind of calm confidence that actually transfers into the saddle and connection with their horse.

Today, that aspect of my yoga business funds the life I used to think was “too much to ask for.” I’m now campaigning my young horse at the top of her sport, and I get to teach yoga in a way that’s both deeply meaningful and financially sustainable.

And that’s the part I hope encourages other yoga teachers: the dream isn’t naïve, but it does need structure. You can love yoga and build something profitable. You can serve people and also be supported. You don’t have to choose between purpose and success.

Tiffany, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m a yoga teacher, neuroscience researcher, and lifelong equestrian athlete, and my work lives at the intersection of nervous system regulation, performance, and partnership with the horse.

I didn’t start in a beautifully branded online business. I started where a lot of yoga teachers start – teaching classes at my neighborhood gym, showing up with a mat, a sequence, and a deep desire to help people feel better in their bodies. I fell in love with teaching yoga immediately, not because I wanted a fitness career, but because I kept seeing how yoga changes people from the inside out. It gave them more body awareness, more steadiness, more self-trust.

That passion eventually became a community-based studio. It was the kind of studio I wish everyone could experience. Glow Yoga was warm, supportive, and rooted in real connection. I also learned the hard reality of small business ownership the hard way. I worked 14-hour days, paid the rent, paid my teachers, kept the lights on, and after four years, I realized I still hadn’t ever paid myself a real paycheck.

It was humbling, and honestly heartbreaking, because I was doing everything I thought I was “supposed” to do. I was putting everyone else first. And at a certain point, I had to confront a truth that a lot of heart-led business owners avoid – if your business can’t support you, it really can’t support anyone.

That shift became a turning point in my life and work. I stopped building from obligation and started building from alignment focusing on my own strength, desires, and the life I actually wanted to live.

For me, that meant blending my two worlds – yoga and horses.

Now I work primarily with equestrian athletes who are high-performing riders that want to feel grounded, focused, and confident with their horses, especially under pressure. Riding is such a unique sport because your nervous system is always in conversation with another living being that just so happens to be biologically designed as a prey animal. If you’re tense, bracing, overthinking, or running on adrenaline, your horse often feels it before you do. So a huge part of performance isn’t just skill, it’s nervous system regulation. Horses are also designed to co-regulate with their herd and in human relationships, they also co-regulate with you. When you’re a bundle of stress, your horse also becomes a bundle of stress.

That’s the problem I solve. I help riders regulate their nervous systems so they can ride with clarity, stability, and connection.

I offer equestrian-specific yoga, breathwork, and myofascial release, and I teach it through a neuroscience and research-informed lens, meaning we’re not just stretching. We’re training the body and brain for better recovery from stress, improved focus, improved balance and mobility, and more resilient performance in and out of the saddle. My clients often tell me they feel the difference not only in their riding, but in their everyday life where they’re less reactive, more present with their horses and their families, and more confident in their own bodies.

The other part of my work, and the part I’m really proud of these days, is helping other yoga teachers build sustainable, heart-centered businesses without abandoning what they love about yoga. Without succumbing to the hustle culture that says the only way to make a living is to burn yourself out teaching 20 classes a week at 5 different studios around town. I know what it’s like to give everything and still feel like you’re barely surviving. I also know that it doesn’t have to be that way. I guide yoga teachers on how to position their work in a way that reflects the real value of what they provide, so they can pay their bills and still build a life that supports their dreams.

If there are three things I want people to know about my brand and my work, it’s this: I care deeply about transformation, not just techniques and alignment. I believe yoga can be both sacred and sustainable. And I’m here to help people, riders and yoga teachers, build resilience, confidence, and a life that feels as strong on the inside as it looks on the outside.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.tiffanypridgen.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theequestrianyogi
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/glowyoganc
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiffany-pridgen/
• Twitter: https://x.com/glowyoganc
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@yogaforequestrians

Image Credits
Photos by Caitlyn Nicole Photography (horses & headshot) & Erica Cordeiro (sound bath)