Unhappy relationships are a funny, especially the long term ones that have promises made for the future. At the time when Buti Yoga found me on a Facebook Ad, my journey towards self-discovery and personal wellness had been in full swing for almost a year. My relationship had fizzled into a deeply unhappy place, work was stressful—all the things. I’d taken a dive into studying the Divine Feminine, months & months of study, was obsessed and having habitual fire-y conversations with my father about the subject. I found Menstruality, Qoya, Red Tent all in that time before Buti found me. I listened ceaselessly to women discussing their awakening, the opening of their hearts to themselves. Gabby Bernstein, Rochelle Schieck, Alejandra Pope, Sjane , Meggan Watterson, Lisa Lister, Rebecca Campbell – Pretty much all of HayHouse. The work I was doing was intuitive listening & I felt the most booming YES to Bizzie Gold’s format when it came across my screen. I have always been interested in social media and visual marketing – Brand aligning with vision and format. The first time I would try Buti would be at a teacher training, I was determined.
I felt the stars align – first, the training was half off (Thanks Universe!) ; Second, I took action and put up a GoFundMe to ask for support. I had listened to The Compound Effect and knew that I could fail forward a bit. If no one donated, what’s the worst that could happen? They say no. They make fun of me (which happened). I called it my “Goddess MBA” fundraiser and vowed to purchase the training if I raised half the money needed. I went to sleep and woke up the VERY next day to a large donation from a dear friend from growing up in NC whose home had burned a year prior. I had donated immediately to his fundraiser. He repaid the favor when he saw my fundraiser. It’s wild how that works sometimes – especially when you look back to how important that purchase of Buti Yoga Teacher Certification would become.
I went to training in Naples October 2017 having been offered THAT WEEK an opportunity to open a yoga studio with my best yogi friend and future roommate who was RYT. Manifesting hard, I knew the business would happen. I had never done Buti Yoga, and had only seen a couple FB videos. I plopped my mat right between Sasha, the Master Trainer, and a magical being who I would find out had JUST got her head back on straight and heart set right after breaking up an engagement. I was unhappy and she held space for me to spill forth over the two days as we shook and hollered and sweated like nothing I’d ever experienced. Lifechanging at its core, Buti certification is a useful practice wehther you intend to teach or not. My Buti sister mat mate was an example of someone who had been present with the practice of Buti Yoga and a tribe of EPIC women in Naples, Florida. She had the medicine for longer than I had, but I saw a light at the end of the tunnel through her journey – for both my unhappiness and my relationship (after quite a bit of chakra shaking). It started with fire.
I came back and broke off my engagement. They tell you not to do that in Buti, but I like to think I’m the exception to the rule. It’s likely the most difficult thing to discuss, relationships. They have cycles just like all of life. Birth, Life, Death, Rebirth. All the phases of the cycle were becoming more present in my life and I had found my Buti – My way to handle literally anything and everything, my way to realign. It was my access to Divine Feminine energy whenever I wanted, and it came with a tribe of women who believed AND LIVED by Buti’s core values. As a woman who has had sticky/sketchy friendships with other women growing up & who had just felt stabbed in the back by a woman, to find such a community was as much my medicine, my “Buti” as the movement practice itself.
Messy and painful, I proceeded to Buti my way through the months to follow. I hadn’t heard of a class in St. Pete, so I was an avid at-home practitioner. I was online wellness coaching so I shared my Buti practice on social media all the time. Some looked at me like I was crazy, others flocked to me. It was a lot; I’m not going to lie. Learning to write a pitch deck to present to potential investors, sizing my involvement in lacrosse down, doing the spiritual/intellectual work, trusting the process, asking for help from my family for the first time since early in college – the ego was burning away, and that process hurts. I did a chakra awakening sequence* a day for months and months and held focus on opening a studio. When my friend, roommate, and initial business partner found her calling to return to school in the fall which turned to studying abroad in Italy for 2 years – we navigated breaking up a business partnership (without losing the friendship) seamlessly. It was through these times that I was convinced of the relationships in my life shifting to a deeply grounded place, a place of love and a whole lot of great tunes.
So there I was, had JUST got certified in late spring and was asked to sub at Ganesha Hot Yoga – one of two studios in St. Pete offering Buti classes. And I accidentally went to Emily’s class. It was the first time that I’d felt a heavy hit Buti class in person since my trainings. For anyone who has taken Emily’s class, she’s a Master Trainee for good reason – will totally kick your ass. What I believed and knew about Buti Yoga as a movement, a community and a lifestyle translated authentically to me asking her for a meeting to discuss opening a studio with her at the end of that class. People always think that we have been friends or known each other for years—I only met Emily May of last year 2018. If I could put “what Buti means to me” into a few short sentences it would be – “Buti means ohana and self-love simultaneously” – it is the ultimate tool with which I dive daily into my own self care. It’s a deep remembering of the most integral part of the spirit within. It’s the outward expression of the spiraling energies of our world, both within and without. I am so grateful to have it in my life.
