Month: May 2011

business, yoga

Beginning: 6 Crucial Pieces of Advice for Nonprofit Business Plans

Christa Avampato

From Flickr
“If your life’s work can be accomplished in your lifetime, then you aren’t thinking big enough.” ~ Wes Jackson

It’s so easy to fall in love with our ideas, so in love that we become blind to the glaring gaps and omissions that need to be thought through carefully. I had dinner with my friend, Michael, last night. He was one of the people whom I asked to review the first draft of my business plan for Compass Yoga. As usual, he responded with thoughtful insight, sound questions, and wise advice. He is one of those people who can tread that delicate line between being unfailingly supportive while also challenging my thought process, and he shares his opinions with grace and in the best interest of the person he is helping. He is tough but fair.

His advice is just too good for me to keep all to myself so I wanted to share it with you as well in the hopes that it helps your projects, too:

1.) First, start small. I have a tendency to take a project and throw in every last possible idea that may have something to do with my main goal. I let my imagination run wild, which in the concept phase is certainly fine and highly encouraged. Michael helped me to see that I had to stay true to my main mission for Compass as it gets off the ground and not get distracted with tangential side bars.

2.) Corporate and government grants are the most thankless forms of funding. I had been considering them as revenue streams and Michael encouraged me to put them aside for the initial launch. They’re a huge time suck and the arduous amount of paperwork makes them less than worthwhile for a new organization. What does make sense is to become an authorized contractor. A lot of paperwork there as well, but much more lucrative than being a grantee.

3.) Be self-sustaining. Michael and I both worked in the nonprofit world. We both spent a lot of time trying to encourage our respective organizations to generate their own revenue for the sake of sustainability. Though I’ve preached this to others, I didn’t take Michael’s advice in my own business plan. I needed his voice of reason as a strong reminder of the idea that “nonprofit” doesn’t equal “give away the farm”. Core services should be self-funding with grants for additional programming. In this way, an organization is never beholden to any one revenue stream.

4.) Keep your day job. This is a favorite topic of ours. We’ve both done the dance of how to balance a career with our passions and how to fund it all in the process. Having a day job with a stable income and reasonable hours provides entrepreneurs with the freedom to experiment as they scale. There’s no time pressure to get results so you can pay your bills, and therefore you can make all the right choices for all of the right reasons.

5.) The only way forward is together. When Michael read my business plan his first thought was, “You and what army are going to fill this enormous, latent need?” The mission is an audacious goal – the work of many lifetimes – and partnerships are critical. My life’s work is bigger than my lifetime, and therefore needs others to have as a great as impact as possible.

6.) Focus on your unique abilities. It’s well and good to frame up a feel-good mission that people will have some heart for. To put that mission into action, financial partners will need to understand how a partnership with Compass Yoga saves them a good deal of money over the lifetime of the partnership and that I can provide a service that they aren’t equipped to provide themselves. They need to fully understand in plain speak that they need what I have to offer, and that what I have to offer is more than they could get from any other partner. What makes us unique is what makes our market position defensible.

I left dinner with Michael feeling both grateful and hopeful. Grateful that he took so much time and care to offer this much support, and hopeful that I can actually get this going far sooner than I expected. By starting small there’s no reason that I can’t get going immediately. Many times, the tendency with big projects is to wait as if waiting will bring about some magical time when it all falls in to place. My experience has shown that magic doesn’t just show up; we have to get out there, work hard, and cultivate it. The magic lies within us.

health, medical, military, yoga

Beginning: Why I Want to Work With Returning Veterans Through Compass Yoga

Christa Avampato

Damon Winter/The New York Times. 87th Battalion in Afghanistan
New York Times Quotation of the Day: “A lot of people were excited about coming home. Me, I just sat there and I wondered: What am I coming back to?” ~ Sgt. Brian Keith, part of the First Battalion, 87th Infantry in Fort Drum, N.Y., which recently finished a yearlong tour in Afghanistan

This quote perfectly encapsulates why I’m so interested in making veterans a central population I work with through Compass Yoga. On Memorial Day, we spend a lot of well deserved time paying tribute to the service of our troops at home and abroad. Most of this tribute goes toward their courage on the battle fields that are all-too-common in today’s world. I always wonder (and worry) about what that time in battle does to them in the quiet moments when they are alone, what it does to their families, and how they will integrate back into society when their tours of duty end. I worry most about the people like Sgt. Brian Keith, and I want to help them. After all they’ve done for us, I feel that this is the very least I can do for them.

Here are the facts that lead me to feel so much compassion and duty to serve veterans through Compass Yoga:

1.)20% of soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq have PTSD while a total of 40% of those from tours of duty in Iraq alone have some type of mental health issue

2.) 20% of all suicides in the U.S. every year are veterans.

3.) Recent statistics show that 3% of men enlisted in the military get divorced each year; 7.8% of women in the military get a divorce every year. And the trend is climbing.

It’s important for us to recognize the heroic acts that all soldiers perform while in uniform. This Memorial Day, I’m also thinking about what happens to them when they return to civilian clothes, to their friends and family back home, and to their health and wellness after they’ve served with such courage. They need us to be there for them to support their transition back to life off the battle field. They have served us too well for too long to not receive as much care as we can possibly provide at they face their own battles back home.

The New York Times article referenced above has narrative and interactive features that detail the year-long deployment of the 87th Battallion in Afghanistan. It’s a tremendous look inside what it means for them troops to be on the battle field and then try to transition back to a home life that feels as foreign to them as the dangerous places where they serve.

books, learning, yoga

Beginning: Yoga Teaches Us to Fall with Grace

Christa Avampato

Photo by Elwanderer
“One learns to fall gracefully in order to roll.” ~ Matthew Sanford

Two weeks later, I’m still thinking about Matthew Sanford’s talk at the Yoga Journal Conference. His book, Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence had a profound effect on me, how I see the world, and how I see my own yoga practice and teaching. The quote above is one of my favorites from the book. It’s the lesson Matthew learned from one of his yoga students who has cerebral palsy. The man explained that falling is a regular event for him, particularly as he gets in and out of the shower. He had hoped that yoga would help him improve his balance so he wouldn’t fall so often. And then one day he did fall and his body lightly landed on the ground without much pain. At that moment he realized that what yoga really taught him to do was how to fall with grace so that he didn’t get badly hurt when he fell.

The Universe has a wonderful way of handing us exactly what we need, though the method by which we get it isn’t always apparent to us. Matthew’s student end goal wasn’t to fall less; he wanted to get hurt less. He thought that would happen, and logically so, by falling less often. Instead, he learned to have grace on the way down and built strength to lift himself back up. Same goal accomplished, just a different path than he planned.

This time around Memorial Day is always a powerful one for me. There are changes and shifts that seem to happen in my life every year at just about this time. I make decisions and plans about what to do and what to stop doing. I always meet new people, some of whom end up becoming an integral part of my life. I’m confronted with new areas of learning and challenge that engage and inspire me. There is always a period of new beginnings for me that finds its roots on the doorstep of summer. I’m conscious of the end goals of these new beginnings, and open to the different paths that may lead to them.

moving, New York City, travel, yoga

Beginning: Making Lemonade and Reconfiguring My Fall

Christa Avampato

The social summer is just about to begin this weekend, and already I was planning my Fall.

An apartment lost
I have been considering a move to a new apartment after my lease expires in September. I found one with my current management company and put in an application a few weeks ago. A completely gut-renovated 1 bedroom with a private garden. It was going to be spectacular. I’m sure it still will be, but it’s not going to be mine. For financial reasons, it’s better for the management company to accept another application from one of my neighbors who’s been in her rent-controlled 2 bedroom / 2 bath / formal dining room apartment for 27 years. New York real estate, and the current rental market in particular, is a business focused on cold, hard cash.

And relief found
I thought I’d be disappointed with the loss of the opportunity, and all I felt upon hanging up the phone with my real estate agent was an enormous sigh of relief. I felt free of a lot of burdens, some I didn’t even realize I was carrying. It was no coincidence that when I hung up with the agent, I found myself in front of my small Ganesha statue that’s part of my meditation space. (He is known in Hindu scriptures to be the remover of obstacles, and he and I have a long-time understanding that when I don’t get what I want it’s always for my own good.) I had put a number of other options for my Fall on hold because I assumed I’d be busy with packing and moving. Now that I’ll be staying in my cozy studio, all these questions that have been floating around in my mind were completely settled in one fell swoop:

1.) 300 hour yoga teacher training at ISHTA. I attended their info session a few weeks ago and was very impressed with what they had to offer for teachers interested in using yoga for therapeutic purposes, my intended pursuit with Compass Yoga. Now that I won’t be moving, I will be able to make the time to attend their September 2011 – March 2012 program, and my plans for Compass will be right on track.

2.) Volunteer vacations. It’s been about a year and a half since I went to Costa Rica with Cross-Cultural Solutions in 2009, and I’ve wanted to take another volunteer vacation since the moment I got back. I taught yoga in Costa Rica and spent time working with the elders and children in and around Cartago. I’m making plans to travel to Haiti in September to work with my friends who run the nonprofit Healing Haiti. There’s also a possibility with Cross-Cultural Solutions of being one of the first batch of Americans who can legally travel to Cuba again as part of their volunteer program there. More details to come.

3.) No packing means a chance to redecorate. Yesterday I was flipping through a few interior design sites and one of them talked about how important it is for your space to give you a specific feeling every time you return home. That feeling should be the basis of your decorating rather than focusing on specific colors or arrangements purely for aesthetic reasons. Similar to the realization of the power of the question, “Why?” when building dreams, I had the same kind of feeling here. I’ve never thought about the design of my space as having a specific feeling, but rather a specific look. This new perspective gives me all types of design ideas that I’m excited to put into action in my space.

4.) Enjoy summer. I would have spent a good portion of the summer packing, planning,and reconfiguring my life for my new digs. Studies say moving is the most stressful event in our lives next to the death of a loved one. Crazy, but anyone who’s moved, especially in New York City, knows how tough it can be. Now I have the opportunity to just enjoy the summer knowing that Fall will come in due time without the stress of planning a move.

Aside from all of these logistical reasons for being happy about this news, there was a bigger life lesson for me, too. In the past I have been an obsessive planner. My coach, Brian, and I have worked on this area a lot over the past year. I’ve always been someone so worried that plans A, B, and C wouldn’t work out that I had to have back-up plans D, E, and F ready to go at a moment’s notice. This kind of behavior is an enormous waste of time, and sadly it’s served me so well in the past that it became an annoying habit. In the past year I’ve been able to let go of a lot of that.

We can’t possibly plan for every chance event, and to try to do that is a thankless task. I improvise more often now, and more importantly, I trust myself, the universe, and the idea that somehow our lives work out in the best way possible so long as we commit to show up and do our best every day. It’s all I can do, and that’s enough. Lesson confirmed.

art, change, charity, nonprofit, photographs, poverty, relationships, social change, society

Beginning: Hear the Hungry Benefit with Featured Artist J.T. Liss Raises Funds to Provide A Supportive Community for New York City’s Homeless

Christa Avampato

On Monday night I attended a fundraiser at Webster Hall for a start-up nonprofit called Hear the Hungry. The group’s mission is to bring “food, companionship, and other basic necessities to the homeless in New York and L.A.” I am especially moved by their holistic mission because of a recent experience I had with the homeless in my own neighborhood while I was taking a walk with my pup, Phineas. Yes, we need food, but we also need a compassionate ear to hear us and a generous heart to sit with us for a while. Hear the Hungry is providing this unique and badly needed service in our city, for a population that is largely stepped over, ignored, or just plain invisible to too many of us.

Events like this are powerful reminders of how much of an impact we can have at every turn if only we recognize our own power in every exchange we have. The day after the event I walked through my usual activities much more conscious of my interactions with others, particularly those who I didn’t know. It made me think about how important it is to be present with others, to give them our full attention, and to recognize their unique value.

Two Ways You Can Help:

Hear the Hungry
In its one year, Hear the Hungry has changed the lives of the homeless through compassion, trust, and the firm belief that all people deserve the opportunity to belong to a supportive and loving community. If you’d like to learn more about them and get involved in their mission, find them on Twitter, Facebook, and at their blog.

Photography For Social Change
Through his initiative Photography for Social Change, photographer J.T. Liss creates stunning, poignant images with the goals of “inspiring advocacy, helping others in need, and allowing art to spread positivity.” 25% of the proceeds from all photos sold will go to unique nonprofit organizations that are striving to help others in need. Current partner organizations include Hear The Hungry (NYC), Hug It Forward (CA), and Saint Joseph Music Program (NYC).

For more information on J.T. and Photography for Social Change, please visit and “Like” his Facebook Page.

choices, decision-making, yoga

Beginning: Bring Dreams to Life By Asking ‘Why?’

Christa Avampato

From http://www.flickr.com/photos/emagic/
“When the why gets big enough the how takes care of itself. ” ~ Universal Law

Chiroyogi, a reader of my blog, left the quote above on my post about my future plans for Compass Yoga. At first, I was struck by how simple this universal law seems and then after I reflected on all of the “coincidental” turning points in my life, I realized how true it is. In our society we focus so much on what we need to do, where we need to go, and how we’re going to make it all work. How often do we really ask ourselves why? Not often enough, even though understanding the why of our thoughts and actions holds all of the real wisdom.

In relation to Compass Yoga, I thought for a long time about how the company might be structured so I could work on it full-time, where it would be based, and who it would serve. I never really stopped to ask why. Or as yoga teacher Elena Brower so eloquently discussed at the Urban Zen event I attended this week, I wasn’t focusing enough on why my mission of serving the under-served is so important to me. I knew it was valuable, unique work to build a business around. I just wasn’t digging deep enough and therefore hadn’t recognized what really fascinates me about the under-served population: the complexity of their situations gets my blood pumping like nothing else.

I really love challenges that have lots of layers and dimensions. I am fascinated by revelations that slowly come into focus one small detail at a time and then the rush I feel when all of a sudden the connections between the dots are so clear. And this fascination, the why, helped me find a mission statement, partnerships, a staffing model, a business structure, and revenue streams that I had never even imagined as possible. The Universal Law stands: once I answered why I am so passionate about helping the under-served through yoga, the how fell right into my hands as if the Universe just gently placed the answers in my lap and then left as quietly as it had approached. It was eerie and beautiful and if it hadn’t happened to me with such precision, I might not have believed it was even possible.

I’ve heard the saying, “Every problem contains the seeds to its own solution.” To be honest, I never really believed that until now. The sayings in the realm of problem solving that have always resonated with me much more come from Albert Einstein: “Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value” and “It’s not that I’m smart; it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”

It’s no wonder that a man like Einstein, someone who uncovered so many Universal Laws himself, would have a personal philosophy that falls so perfectly into line with the Universal Law that Chiroyogi left in his blog comment on my post. Find the answer to why you’re moving in a certain direction by sitting with the question and focusing on making a valuable contribution to humanity. The answer is sure to arise.

happiness, healthcare, values, yoga

Beginning: Sustainable Happiness Event at the Urban Zen Center

Christa Avampato

“Figure out your service on this planet. Figure out how that service nourishes the Earth and go do that.” ~ Elena Brower

On Monday night, through a tip from the always-in-the-know Yogadork and by the grace of Mike Kim, I was able to attend the Sustainable Happiness event at the Urban Zen Center. The talk was curated by Dr. Frank Lipman, founder of the Eleven Eleven Wellness Center, and included life coach Lauren Zander, Chairman and Co-founder of the Handel Group, and yoga instructor Elena Brower, founder of Virayoga. The talk was part of Dr. Lipman’s series Conversations on Wellness.

The talk kicked off with Dr. Lipman discussing the emerging field of epigenetics, the premise of which was perfectly described in a 2010 Time Magazine cover story: Your DNA Isn’t Your Destiny. Despite what we’ve been told by many people who practice medicine, epigenetics says that we are able to make profound changes in the way our genes present themselves. We are not victims to our genes; they are just one component of how our overall health and well-being evolves over a lifetime. And that component is only roughly 25% of our wellness story. 50% has to do with our lifestyle – our exercise routine, our stress level, the food we eat, etc. The remaining 25% is influenced by our environment – the air we breathe, the water we drink, etc. The best part? It’s never too late to make positive changes that impact our wellness of body, mind, and spirit.

The most interesting part of the evening involved Elena discussing how her life coaching work with Lauren changed her life in profound, unexpected, and sometimes uncomfortable ways. Elena talked about a struggle we all know too well at some point in our lives – our excuses for why we don’t do what we want with our lives. The only one stopping us is us. An ugly, though honest, truth. Lauren’s method helps her clients tease out their beliefs so that they discover why it is they don’t have what they want in their lives.

Being an enormous fan of life coaching, this talk was right up my alley and brought up so many issues that I work on regularly with my coach / therapist, Brian, whom I’ve been working with for 18 months. I showed up at Brian’s door shortly after my apartment building fire to deal with some PTSD issues. I’ve stayed because quite frankly the fire was a wake up call to get my life moving in a more authentic direction. I suspect if Lauren heard my story, she’d concur.

To bring her method of coaching to life, Lauren described several facets in great detail that I found truly thought-provoking:

Chicken and Brat – purposefully annoying, though accurate, descriptions of the voices that pop into our heads the moment we say we can’t do something. We’re either afraid or being stubborn. No, I can’t go for a run. No, I can’t eat healthy. No, I can’t let that guy know I’m really interested in him. All of our excuses can be traced back to one of these personas. So what’s the remedy? Chicken – make a list of all the things you’re afraid of and then go do them. Brat – just stop whining and DO IT!

Happiness Found – we are running all over the place trying to find it. We prop ourselves up with our many vices when happiness is right here in front of us. It’s on the other side of our fears, and its neighbors are confidence and gratitude.

Further Thoughts on Fear – and these just made me so happy to hear that I grinner from ear to ear. 1.) What you are most proud of in your life involves conquering fears. Seriously, make a list of your proudest accomplishments. I bet many if not all of them came about because you conquered a fear. 2.) If you aren’t scared, you aren’t up to enough. You don’t have any fears, you say? Go get some, and then have some fun conquering them.

Promises and Consequences – have trouble keeping New Year’s Resolutions or promises to yourself? Here’s a trick. Make a promise and then give yourself a consequence. Didn’t exercise like you promised yourself you would? That will be an extra hour of cleaning (if you hate cleaning.) Didn’t feel like meditating even though you promised yourself that you’d take 5 minutes out every day to do it? No dessert for you (if you love dessert.) Lauren stressed that the consequences can be funny, but should certainly be deterrents that help you keep the promises you make to yourself. Elena vows that this method, if you get the promises and consequences right, creates new health habits in 6 weeks.

Parent Traits – you vowed you’d never be your mother. You did everything possible to avoid becoming your father. Lauren asks you to make a list of all your parents traits, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Now go do some digging and detail out, in writing, how each on lives in you. Then find a way to evolve those traits to their enlightened state. It’s difficult and uncomfortable, but worth it. Brian’s put me through the same exercise, and in the process has helped me re-write my story with more authenticity and personal power.

The quote at the top of this post by Elena Brower is one that fills my heart until it’s overflowing. It was the most powerful statement of the evening for me, particularly because my vision for Compass Yoga is becoming so clear. Lauren’s goal with her clients, Elena’s with her students, and Dr. Lipman’s with his patients come from this one universal truth: you get one shot in this life as the beautiful creation that is you. Stop making excuses, inventing stories, and living behind half-truths of why you can’t have what you want. Just go get it.

education

Beginning: Why A College Education Matters

Christa Avampato

Last week every major news outlet in the U.S. ran a story, or several stories, about the just-released Pew Research Center study entitled “Is College Worth It?” The study found that “57% of Americans now believe the value of higher education is not worth the cost.” I first heard about this study in the elevator of my office building, and as I made my way to my desk, my heart sank.

This study could take us in a few different directions:

1.) The cost of a university education, cited by the study as the main barrier for more Americans to attend and graduate from college, could begin to be re-evaluated. Operations and financial directors of U.S. colleges and universities could begin to serious look at cost savings that could make college more affordable. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see a headline that says, “College tuition in the U.S. drops compared to the year before for the first time in our history“? It’s going to take some serious retooling of these institutions to make this headline a reality, and they will have to take a look at every single line item, every single process, and open it up for re-evaluation. It would be an effort worth undertaking.

2.) College becomes a publicly funded venture as it is in countries like Canada and a good deal of Europe. This of course will take a government action that our country fights tooth and nail at every turn: an increase in taxes. Given our current federal environment, I’m not sure if it’s possible for this option to come to life. It would also require a serious re-tooling of our education system as a whole, a subject we have struggled with for decades since. I’d love to see a renegade state take on this experiment the way that Massachusetts ran its experiment of providing healthcare to all residents.

3.) Potential college students will throw up their hands at the high cost of college and not apply. This is the possibility that really pains me. I’d rather pay more taxes now than face a future with fewer American college graduates. We are already woefully behind many other countries in the world in critical fields like engineering, science, and math. What we need is for more Americans to attend college, not less, if we are to continue to compete on the world stage. This needs to be our focus in our debate, and to make it happen we need to consider every possible option to reach this goal.

As this debate continues, and I’m sure it will be a part of our news for years to come, my plea to young high school graduates is this: you cannot let the high price of college get in the way of your future. Easy for me to say, right? How would I know what problems your families face? How would I, a very well-educated professional, know how tough it is for you? And my answer to that is, trust me, I know plenty about how difficult it is to fund a college education because I funded my own, and you should do it any way you can.

Here’s why: My mother provided for a family of five with multiple jobs making far less in her annual salary than it cost for a single year’s tuition at Penn, where I went for my undergraduate degree. I was on my own to fund college any way I possibly could, and though Penn was a very difficult road for me and I thought about giving up so many times that I just stopped counting, I’m so grateful that I hung in there. I always worked at least two jobs in school, and filled out every possible form for every scrap of money I could possibly earn or be granted or loaned. I went without a lot; I certainly had many moments of embarrassment at my financial situation that I could do nothing about. It was humbling to say the least. I had to take the very, very long-view on why all this hard work and struggle was worth it. And I did the math. Over the long-run, a college education would pay off in increased income. It would be a slow rise, but it would happen if I just kept working as hard as I possibly could. So I did, and it worked out. It took so much effort, though I’ve never regretted that choice. Not for one single moment.

As if that debt wasn’t enough, I also put myself through graduate school at the Darden School at UVA, too, and continue to be grateful for that investment as well. And it was a very large investment. It was what most Americans pay for a mortgage. Again, I did the math and worked as hard as I could. It worked out. It continues to work out.

Funding your own college education carries plenty of compromises, challenges, and frustrations. And so does everything else that’s worthwhile. Go to college.

business, career, meditation, yoga

Beginning: Further Details About the Future of My Company, Compass Yoga

Christa Avampato

In the past week, I have started to put together a business plan that will facilitate my goal of working on my own business full time. The admission of this goal has been a long time coming; for years I have tried to figure out what a lifelong career working for someone would look like for me. That picture never fully, or even partially, materialized. I would sit in my meditation practice, go to my yoga mat, and talk to my friends and family in the hopes that some clear picture would reveal itself in my mind’s eye. It was only recently that the answer bubbled up to the surface: my way forward lies in another direction and that direction must be of my own making.

On Sunday, May 15th I had an odd experience in Whole Foods in which I could feel my grandmother very nearby. Later on that day, I went home and began writing down how my own yoga-based business would take shape. I’ve had bits and pieces of this idea floating around in my mind for several years but all the pieces felt very disconnected from one another. On May 15th, some kind of magic found its way in and all of my seemingly disconnected pieces gelled together. I heard a divisive “shoomp” as I typed up my plan. I would ask a question and an answer would quickly rise up to meet it. My friend, Rob, summed up the result this way: “Christa, this isn’t a business plan. This is the work of a life.” I feel that way, too.

I’ve begun to circulate the plan to a very few trusted mentors and friends like Rob, people whom I continually ask for advice and guidance on just about every area of my life. As always they have responded with honesty, grace, support, objectivity, and an astounding amount of creativity. Most of them, while students of yoga or have some appreciation for its power, lie outside of the traditional yoga community. They have varied professional and personal backgrounds, savvy business minds, and a lot of heart. I am a lucky lady to know them.

Because so many of you have shown your unwavering support of my ideas through comments, tweets, facebook messages, emails, voicemails, and texts over the 4 years that I’ve been writing this blog, I wanted to share some of the details with you as they’re taking shape:

1.) Compass Yoga will incorporate as a nonprofit. This has been a decision that has required a lot of soul searching, fact checking, numerous hours of consultation, and more pro-con lists / decision trees than I can count.

2.) There will be a physical place that houses Compass Yoga. I have tried this changeable location model and while in many cases this has worked out, for this more refined business vision a permanent physical space is needed.

3.) Compass Yoga will continue to focus on working with underserved populations, and will actually deepen that commitment further with a variety of new programs.

4.) Partnerships will be a key component of the business structure.

5.) Compass Yoga will turn a good deal of its energy toward growing the depth and breadth of the yoga field for all practitioners and teachers.

6.) In order to bring this vision to life in as full a way as possible, I will be undergoing a good deal of additional yoga teacher training in the next year. I am grateful for my location in New York City where many of the top teachers in my chosen specialty reside and teach, and I am equally grateful for my current day job that provides me with the personal funding and flexible schedule to make my extensive yoga teacher training possible.

More details are developing every day as this picture becomes clearer and clearer. The way forward is unfolding…

creative process, creativity, inspiration, love, New York City, nostalgia

Beginning: Building a Space from Love – Heidi’s House by the Side of the Road

Christa Avampato

Front view of Heidi's
“Here are your waters and your watering place. Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.” ~ Robert Frost, seen on the chalk board over the bar at Heidi’s House by the Side of the Road

I went to Heidi’s House by the Side of the Road last week with a small group of friends. It’s not an actual house but an adorable niche that serves tremendous wine and some of the most delicious food I’ve had in a long time. Every nook and cranny of Heidi’s in jam-packed with love, care, and concern. The attention to detail is extraordinary. Heidi herself made sure of it.

Even the name has a heart-felt meaning. In the bathroom there is a needle point that states, “Let me live in my house by the side of the road and be a friend to a man.” It’s a quote by Sam Walter Foss. I asked Heidi why that quote means so much to her that she’d name her business after it. She told me, “It’s the quote on my father’s grave stone.” Gulp. I got goosebumps.

It got me thinking about how important it is to put love into our endeavors, how much of a difference that makes to the people who get to share in your creation. We taste love in food, we hear it in music, and we see it in art. It has this unmistakable and yet unexplainable quality that is universal.

Take a spin over to Heidi’s and see what I mean. Then get cracking on your own creation of love, and let others share in it the way Heidi does.