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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 CoachBefore yoga became my path, life took me through unexpected turns. I grew up in Switzerland and began my career in banking, earning my diploma as a Bankfachmann. But deep down, I knew that life in an office wasn’t for me. I left banking, moved to Zurich, and pursued professional dance, which opened doors to performances and eventually took me to New York City for advanced training. Later, I transitioned into acting and modeling, moving to Los Angeles. Movement, expression, and personal growth were always at the core of my life — and yoga eventually became the container that held it all together. My first real contact with yoga came in New York at age 23, while dealing with persistent back pain from my dance years. Yoga didn’t just help physically, it gave me an inner calm...
Yoga TechBecca’s first experience with yoga came at 16, when her mom brought her to a gentle class in the basement of a church. Something clicked. She left that class knowing yoga would always be part of her life. Raised in Connecticut, later moving to NYC for college, Becca explored arts and education, but also carried the quiet weight of learning disabilities. School felt overwhelming. She battled anxiety and self-doubt from a young age, but those same challenges sparked her gift for empathy and her drive to help others feel safe in their own skin. Over the years, yoga became more than just movement, it became medicine. A place to return to. A space to rebuild. A practice that helped her remember who she is...
Yoga TechMichael’s story begins long before his first formal yoga class. Raised by a hippie parent, yoga was part of his life from the start, woven into his upbringing, not as a trend, but as a way of being. Decades later, after running a successful marketing agency for 20 years, a retreat reignited something in him. That moment of reconnection pulled him back into the practice, first as a student, then as a teacher, eventually becoming a studio owner. Yoga stopped being something in the background. It became his path forward. Outside the studio, Michael is still a creative at heart. He’s a tech geek who loves roller skating, a practice that reminds him to stay connected to joy, freedom, and movement. His approach to yoga and business is shaped by his love for building things from scratch...
Studio OwnerAlecia Iwanchuk is a proud mom to one son and three kitties, and her journey into yoga began as part of a personal healing process. What started as a physical practice quickly unfolded into something much deeper. As yoga began transforming her mind and body, she also reconnected with her soul and uncovered her purpose: to help others awaken their potential. This calling led her to explore energy work and kundalini yoga, eventually anchoring her path as a healer. In 2021, she created a sacred space in her own home, a studio built to help women reconnect with themselves. Through yoga, Alecia guides her clients to use their bodies not just for movement, but as powerful tools for healing and empowerment...
Yoga TechMy name is Joyce Mol, Certified Yoga Teacher with a focus on yin yoga and fascia release therapy. My yoga journey began in 2017 after a burnout. That experience cracked me open, it taught me to live more from the heart and led me to a path of deeper connection. In 2018, things became even more serious after I was in a car accident. My physiotherapist recommended yin yoga to support my healing from a whiplash and PTSD. That practice helped me reconnect emotionally and made it clear that I needed to walk a different path. That same year, I completed my first yin yoga teacher training. Learning how the elements, organs, and emotions are all intertwined taught me to slow down and trust a new way of living. From there, I followed more trainings, including a 200-hour yin yoga certification...
Yoga Business CoachI always believe that Yoga found me. I started practising Yoga almost 20 years ago in my early 20s. At the time, it was still a little weird and woo woo, so I didn’t really tell anyone I was going. I just knew that when I went to class, I felt so at peace within myself. It felt so comforting that I had to keep going. I began my first teacher training with no intention of teaching—I just really wanted to understand what was happening for me. I studied slowly, and then with a gentle budge from my teacher, I taught my first class. From there, I just knew I wanted to share these teachings and help others feel that same sense of peace I found. It felt like I was remembering something ancient. Yoga became more than a practice—it became a returning home to myself...
Wellness FounderI was born in the small coastal town of Cádiz, Spain, and moved to the U.S. at the age of four when my father, a Navy man, was stationed stateside. I grew up in Virginia Beach and stayed active through school, cheerleading, student government, tutoring athletes to make ends meet. Yoga found me in college, not through a deep spiritual calling, but because the lacrosse coach needed someone certified to teach his team. It was the 90s, before Yoga Alliance, and for me, yoga was just another hustle. I taught classes, waited tables at Hooters, worked retail, nannied—whatever it took to stay afloat after I emancipated myself at sixteen due to a difficult home life. For years, yoga was fitness and income. That changed after the birth of my daughter...
Studio OwnerI’ve always believed I’m a dreamer. I don’t dwell on problems—I naturally focus on solutions. That mindset has carried me through life and into yoga. One of the people I’ll forever be grateful to is a dear friend who introduced me to my very first yoga class. That single act changed everything. From the beginning, I felt held by this path. I didn’t experience the kind of dramatic hardships that many others do. Instead, I embraced both the stillness and the excitement that came my way. I allowed the journey to unfold as it needed to—without trying to control or force anything. My yoga path began with a humble studio, then evolved into leading teacher trainings, and later expanded into hosting retreats. Each chapter opened organically, and even now, I stay open to whatever comes next...
Yoga TechOutside of yoga, I’m a recovering overachiever with a love of learning, language, and the little things that make life feel meaningful—like morning cuddles with my cats. I grew up as the child of Iranian immigrants and learned early that to survive and succeed in a new country, I had to work harder, be smarter, and do more than others. My ambition and love of language led me to study Law and International Studies, and I spent a year in Paris studying political science and French at Sciences Po. Fulfilling every migrant parent’s dream, I went on to work as a corporate lawyer, and later as an operations executive in the tech industry, climbing my way up the corporate ladder. I lived in New York during the height of the pandemic, helping expand an Australian tech startup into the US market—a role that was fast paced...
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