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Behind every yoga business is a founder with a vision. Explore their journeys, lessons, and strategies to build, grow, and make an impact.
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Movement helped Juri Ko navigate grief, personal transitions, and the process of reconnecting with herself. After discovering a deeper side of yoga in Hawaiʻi, she completed her teacher training and began building communities around movement
Yoga Business CoachI grew up in Melbourne, Australia, in the suburbs. At school and in my early life I was mostly interested in music. I was a musician — I played drums in bands, taught music, and taught drums. Then I developed a repetitive strain injury in my arms and needed a career change. I decided to become a mechanical fitter, an industrial engineer — a practical industrial engineer, fitter and turner. I lasted less than a year before I badly hurt my back. That’s what led me into yoga. It was through injury and trying to rehabilitate my back. An exercise physiologist gave me cat-cow and some basic stretches, and a friend encouraged me to come to a proper yoga class at a gym. It was very daggy, very uncool — but it made me feel so much better, both in my back and in myself...
Yoga Business CoachBeyond yoga, I am really just a left-brained geek who also loves the expressive arts. I've always loved teaching (primarily because teaching is an excellent way to learn) and I've also always enjoyed performance. Before yoga, I earned my MFA from ACT in San Francisco and was an aspiring (and very occasionally paid) actor and director in NYC. Like many things I loved, I gravitated towards teaching and also taught stage combat, acting, movement, and voice. I attended my first yoga class in NYC in 1998 on the recommendation of my boyfriend and loved it. It was a relief to me that yoga was NOT performance-based, but rather about my own experience on the mat. Unlike the dance classes I tried to hack my way through, I didn't have to worry about getting the steps right or impressing someone else...
Retreat HostI’m Kristýna Coufalová, a yoga, barre, and pilates teacher based between Norway and Sicily. Outside the studio, I’m a mother, a nature lover, and someone fascinated by psychology and human stories. Yoga came into my life when I felt disconnected from my body and craved safety and balance. My first class wasn’t about the shapes — it was about the silence that followed. That silence became my anchor. But the journey hasn’t been smooth. For years, I struggled with body image, feeling like I didn’t have the “right” body for yoga. I had to unlearn those beliefs. I’ve also faced burnout, pouring so much energy into others. Through it all, I kept returning to compassion, patience, and presence — the very things I now teach...
Yoga TechI’m a mother of two and a veteran who served in the U.S. Army for 12 years. I’ve been in the fitness industry for 25 years, but yoga found me during one of the hardest chapters of my life—my divorce. I first stepped into an Ashtanga class hoping to save my marriage. Instead, I found the strength to leave it. I still remember my first class like it was yesterday. I walked in late, nervous and unsure. Jeff, my first yoga teacher, welcomed me in. That one class changed everything. I didn’t even realize I was practicing Ashtanga at first. The class was called Align and Flow, and I kept coming back to it daily. The deeper I went, the more I uncovered parts of myself I had forgotten. Even though the Ashtanga community felt challenging and at times judgmental, I stayed. I trained. I grew...
Studio OwnerI live in a beautiful village in the lap of the Bernese Oberland. For eight years I have made Switzerland my home, teaching full time and now project managing a not-for-profit Yoga Shala. Before settling here, I travelled extensively in India and spent several years in Mysore practicing with Saraswathi Jois and Dr MA Jayashree. Before that, I was a midwife and part-time yoga teacher in London. I first encountered yoga as a child through the television adaptation of Peter Brooks' production of The Mahabharata. I remember sitting, wrapped by the stories and characters. At 21, I practiced my first asana class and knew immediately that this would be my life. At 24, I began my first teacher training with the British Wheel of Yoga...
Yoga TechYoga’s been with me since I was five. My mum was one of the first yoga teachers in Australia, she taught packed classes in our rumpus room. In 1980 at fifteen, I started apprenticing with her at Sutherland Hospital, working with kids who had Down Syndrome and kids with asthma. I was teaching my own classes by eighteen. Surfing entered my life around the same time and became my other spiritual path. I grew up in Cronulla, a gritty surf town south of Sydney, and both yoga and surfing shaped my way of being. But it wasn’t all smooth. I had a big energy early on. Yoga amplified that, but my environment couldn’t hold it. I learned to shrink, to read rooms, to shape shift. I chased validation through performance, trained like a machine, partied even harder. I hit burnout by 23...
Yoga Business CoachI found yoga just after finishing undergrad at UC Irvine. As a lifelong martial artist, I was drawn to it for the physical benefits. At first, it was just something I did at CorePower Yoga to stay flexible. But I didn’t stick with it. It wasn’t until 2019, during a tough chapter in my life, that yoga returned—this time with purpose. I’d been deep in the entertainment industry for years as a performer, casting professional, and talent rep. I was burning out. My roommate dragged me to a class. I hated it at first. But after a few weeks, something shifted. The practice wasn’t just helping my body, it was helping me breathe again, quiet my anxiety, and start to rebuild. That summer, I enrolled in a 200-hour teacher training. The more I practiced, the more I felt like I was coming back to myself...
Yoga TechYoga didn’t enter my life until I turned 30. At the time, I was searching for something deeper—a way to feel grounded and more aligned with myself. I signed up for my first teacher training in Ireland with YogaWorks, and what began as curiosity turned into a turning point. That training cracked something open in me. It showed me that yoga could be both structure and surrender. It became a space where I could move with meaning, breathe with awareness, and live with more intention. Off the mat, I was navigating transitions, uncertainty, and the push to always be doing more. Yoga helped me slow down. It wasn’t always easy. There was self-doubt, fear of being seen, and imposter syndrome. But every challenge deepened my practice—and taught me how to meet life with more grace...
Yoga TechBorn in Mexico City and now based in Basel, Daniela Fuentes has always lived at the intersection of creativity, movement, and deep inquiry. Her path began as a designer and artist, but yoga entered early and never left. Over the last 20 years, she’s woven together yoga, somatics, and creative disciplines to craft a body of work that’s as intellectually rich as it is deeply embodied. She didn’t just stumble into yoga. It was a calling. As she moved through careers in photography, documentary film, and editorial design, yoga remained the thread that grounded her. By 2006, Basel became her new home—and the birthplace of BYOGA BASEL, the city’s first dedicated yoga studio. She taught in unconventional spaces and watched her early classes slowly grow from a few devoted students to full rooms...
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