I recently had the pleasure to interview Amanda Elizabeth Mays. Enjoy!
1.) Tell me about your personal journey with yoga. Why is it important to you?
I first stepped onto my yoga mat at CorePower 4 years ago and haven’t stepped off since. A recent transplant from NYC, my yoga practice in San Diego allowed me to workout in a way that wouldn’t injure my old ski racing knees, but also introduced me to my community to Kombucha drinking, quinoa loving yogis. Why I yoga is to love life. Yoga is the thing that gives me 60 minutes of silence to myself to slow it down and sort out all the details of life. With yoga I live life off auto pilot and can truly hear the palm trees as they sway in the sweet sea air.
2.) When did you first begin teaching yoga? What made you transition into a leadership position?
Two years into my practice I signed up for yoga teacher training with the intention of finding something new in my life. I discovered teaching enabled me to stand in my power. Teaching let the voice inside of me that was dying to come out to be heard and share. I first started teaching at CorePower in Point Loma November of 2015. I was a coach in training for the February 2016 power teacher training and became addicted to this side of yoga. Seeing the transformation in other yogis and being apart of other people’s growth process was the most awesome way I had ever been able served others besides teaching. I always cared for our studio like it was my own, and had had a conversation with my manager about becoming a bigger part of the team. In our second conversation on leadership, I expressed she would have me quitting my day job by the end of 2016. Third time’s a charm, the perfect opportunity came up and I just couldn’t pass it up one more time. I felt the universe had cleared a path for me and I was so excited to be able to head down it. I quit my full time day job in advertising and dove head first as the Studio Assistant at the CorePower in Point Loma this summer. I have to pinch myself everyday I show up for “work” because I’m so grateful this is my real life.
3.) What makes your classes unique?
My classes are unique because my intention for teaching is to serve students and help them love themselves. My whole life is about love: being love, spreading love, even my name means ‘love.’ My themes are from the heart- and are about what I’m going through as a human in life that week. The hope is to connect with students in a way that they can pick up some insight from my experience to help them process whatever experience they’re going through. I don’t consider myself the most advanced yogi, so I teach poses whether or not I can actually do them. We’ll never know how to do something difficult unless we try to do it together. My students will also tell you mine is one of the only yoga classes they’ve ever taken where they laughed. Life is too short to be so serious and boring – yoga is way more accessible to everyone when we just have fun and don’t take ourselves too seriously. The goal is to make yoga accessible to all.
4.) How does music benefit your guidance in a yoga class?
My classes are always EPF- Electric Power Flow. I love beats and even met my husband at an electronic music festival! Music benefits my guidance in a yoga class because the intention of my music is to give students “all the feels.” Not feels about bad break-ups, or sad love songs. But music that can truly lift you up out of a squat when you feel like there is no more power left in your legs. Or songs that turn a cardio burst into a dance party. Or a song that when you’ve had a crappy day, you can’t help but crack a smile for. With those last few sweet songs at the end of class, I like to give students time to go deep inside – so when they leave class they have that yoga “high.” The music I choose is something you might know, maybe you think you’ve heard, but with an added beat – I’ll take any chance to dance in class.
5.) Tell me about your next event and where we can follow you online.
You can find me on the CorePower Yoga schedule as Amanda Ma. Instagram @amandaemays and Amanda Mays on Facebook. I’m leading retreats in Guam in 2017 – more to come on on my social media in the coming months!
https://instagram.com/p/BJGM6pDBRyA/?taken-by=AmandaEMays
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