09/25/2026
“My yoga journey began when I was 17, when some friends and I got hooked on $5 Friday night karma classes. I couldn’t afford a membership, so I joined the energy exchange program, and I started taking class like six days a week, sometimes twice a day. I was here all the time. Once you find the thing that you really enjoy, you start to center everything else around it. And I always felt at home on the mat. You can show up wearing whatever, feeling whatever, and you always walked away feeling better, feeling more connected to yourself and your body.
And that heat was just so addicting. I love the feeling after stepping off my mat and feeling not only reset, but being like, “What can I do now going forward to continue this feeling, not only for me, but outwards, in the world?” And I pretty much grew up here. Sara was one of my first teachers. M.J., Bernie, they’ve all seen me since I was 17 years old. They’ve seen me grow up and evolve. It’s changed the trajectory of who I am as a human being.
I got certified to be a teacher when I was 22. To be in your early 20s and be like, “No, this is what I’m going to do. I’m going to teach at 6 a.m., I’m going to teach at 9 p.m.,” I had to change my whole life and future in order to support my yoga journey and career. I started working in bars to help sustain myself, to bring in money so I could keep practicing, teaching, and trying to get on the schedule and stuff. It wasn’t a smooth or easy journey. It takes a little bit of a grind.
So I did work in bars and stuff for a long time, and the juggling of different lives back and forth. At one point, I had to make a choice to build something around the lifestyle that I actually want. And despite the societal pushback of people being like, “You’re never going to make money, you’re never going to be successful. This is a waste of time. What are you actually going to do for work?”, I never lost the reason why I wanted to do this in the first place. And eventually those people come to my class and they’re like, “Oh, never mind. Do this. Do this every day, okay?”
🦋 Steph, personal trainer + teacher at Morpho Bleu
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