Community Highlights: Meet Cara Simmons of Ahimsa Yoga

Today we’d like to introduce you to Cara Simmons.

Hi Cara, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Well, I feel like I have lived and currently live many lives in this one life. My “yoga” life, however, has been woven through them all. When I was in college, I started realizing that I had an issue with body image and social anxiety. I wanted to exercise in a way that didn’t make me feel awful about myself. I remember being terrified of going to the gym because of the harsh lighting, the booming music, and all of the people who walked around looking like they jumped right out of Sports Illustrated. That’s when I found yoga – or more accurately – yoga found me. I started to play around with different classes and simply – fell head over heels. When my local studio closed and the nearest one was 45 minutes away from my home, I had to start finding new and different ways to do yoga. I began leading yoga classes after school for some of the teachers I work with. WE would meet 2-3 times a week in the school library before or after school. It was amazing. I realized I LOVED leading my friends in yoga and doing it WITH them – so decided to go to Yoga Teacher Training. I chose this because I wanted to feel comfortable in my home practice and to still feel the amazing community that I always felt in my yoga classes.

I graduated from YTT in September of 2020 – in the middle of a pandemic, and had zero plans to do anything different with my yoga life. I went back to school and kept teaching in the library. Eventually, teachers were asking for different times – on the weekends. So my before and after school classes turned into Saturday and Sunday morning classes. There were about five people who came consistently, and eventually, people from my community heard and began to come too. I was starting to get asked how I preferred to get paid – and it never occurred to me that I could charge money or make money from doing this thing I love so much. However – I didn’t feel comfortable charging when I was using my school (my employer) as a venue. Eventually, someone told me of a man who was renting office spaces just down the street. It was tiny – truly – but it was CHEAP so I jumped in. I didn’t expect to stay there, nor did I expect it to ever be a “studio”. When I opened Ahimsa on January 10th (my mother’s birthday) I had a sold-out class. And have since had to add three additional teachers and have classes every day of the week.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It has been both an insanely smooth road but also full of twists and turns. My biggest struggle has been keeping yoga as a passion while starting yoga as a business. I never wanted it to feel like a job or an obligation, but after about three months, I found that I was no longer enjoying it as I had been. Keeping the community happy and keeping myself happy was a hard balance. I felt that since I was a new business, I couldn’t say no. If someone asked for a yoga session on Tuesday nights at 6:30, I scheduled it. If I was sick, I still taught. If I was crying in my car the entire way to the studio because I simply didn’t “have time” to teach a yoga class to only one person – I still taught. It has been hard learning to say no, and even harder to learn that I CAN say no.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Ahimsa is a yogic philosophy that means non-harm. I chose this as the name for my studio because my goal is to create a place where people can come and feel safe. Safe with their practice, safe with themselves. The studio has classes for everyone. For beginners, for veterans, and everything in between. Our biggest message is that every single person can come to a class and feel capable. Every class offering is built with the practitioners in mind – therefore every class session is a little different. My biggest goal is to help people love their body, and love themselves. No one body can do every posture in yoga in its fullest way, what’s amazing about youga is that EVERYONE is good at SOMETHING. Some come in with amazing flexibility but little strength, others are the opposite. Some have impeccable balance, others are very graceful or pick up things quickly. Every person has a different starting point and thats why I LOVE IT!

What was your favorite childhood memory?
My favorite childhood memory is making a “hot tub” out of the creek in my backyard. It was a long process and was worked on by mane – but it was a blast. We took shovels down through the woods and dug benches into the creek so we could all sit and lounge in the (muddy and gross) water and pretend to be adults.

Pricing:

• New Student Pass – $5
• 5 Class Pass – $40
• Single Class Pass – $10

Contact Info:

• Email: simmons3818@gmail.com
• Website: ahimsayogaweston.com
• Instagram: ahimsayogaweston
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ahimsayogaweston/

Image Credits
Megan Kottman