We recently connected with Yani Nikole and have shared our conversation below.

Yani, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?

I’m actually in the process right now of taking the biggest risk I ever have, and it’s been an emotional rollercoaster. My partner and I are in the process of relocating to a new home in a new city and we’re starting our own gym! It’s definitely going to be a labor of love, possibly for the rest of our life. The home is from 1883 and it’s beautiful but requires a lot of work. It will also be our first time operating a gym on our own so we’re very excited! I’ll be handling all the yoga and yoga for bjj classes, while my boyfriend will. be teaching bjj. I can’t say how it’ll turn out yet, but my fingers are crossed that it will be great. For now, wer’e jus managing our emotions day by day until we get to solid ground.

Yani, 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?

My background is actually dance. I spent the first 15 years of my life being a dancer and it took me a while to realize I missed doing some sort of physical fitness. Cut to almost 10 years later, i was looking at getting back into dance and my boyfriend Joe convinced me to give Brazilian jiu-Jitsu a try first and that’s the path I went down. I was really interested in how much flexibility I was losing when I first started jiu-jitsu because you’re very tense almost all the time, so I got involved with Yoga for BJJ. For me, I felt like my dance background really helped with the technical side of yoga and how to explain that and help other jiu-jitsu practitioners to work on their flexibility. So that’s what I focus on now. I do also teach yoga for non-bjj students, but primarily I work with people on how to increase mobility for bjj and how to avoid injuries.

Has your business ever had a near-death moment? Would you mind sharing the story?

Ah! Yes unfortunately! Not in my yoga business, but I previously managed a hair salon and I missed payroll once! I had run the whole thing and forgot to hit process!! I was terrified. My salon owner though was an amazing influence on me and guided me through the situation and we got it processed as quickly as possible and also worked with employees to give them written checks immediately if needed. The main concern was making sure no one had to suffer based on my mistake. It’s definitely become a core memory for me of something I never want to do again.

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

A big thing that I’ve had to unlearn is needing to be exact in everything. In dance, when you’re performing on a team everything has to look exactly the same as everyone moves together, despite any differences in bodies. In yoga and bjj, not every body does the same thing and that’s okay! It’s actually better. So when I see a video of someone doing a move and it’s a little different than how I do it, I have to remind myself that it’s not a competition and there’s not someone checking up to make sure I’m doing it the same (Although the internet can sure make you feel that way)

Contact Info:

• Website: www.yaninikolefitness.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/yaninikolefitness