Today we’d like to introduce you to Sara Curry.
Sara, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I got started in the field of yoga after a lifetime of contact sports and weight-lifting made me a 25-year old who couldn’t bend over to tie her own shoes. My husband worked an outrageously early morning shift, so at four am, I’d pull on underwear and pants in the dark and he’d put my shoes on my feet before he left for work.
A co-worker told me I’d love Bikram Yoga (insert finger wag and “You don’t know me” under my breath) and that I had to try it. I dragged my feet for months before signing up for my first class.
I know some people have a hard time with their first hot yoga class. I’m not that person. I love it from jump. Fifteen minutes into my first class I thought, “I’ll do this for the rest of my life.”
I loved that it was hard and hot and personal and sweaty. I loved that I had to face myself head-on every day, warts and all. I loved that I could come back and work on myself inside and out every single day.
Like most people with back pain, I got worse when I started yoga. Not knowing anything about yoga therapy, I thought I was supposed to “stretch out” my back pain and often told people my back felt “tight”.
My docs told me I could get surgery, injections or take opioids. I wasn’t having any of that nonsense. I’d just started this yoga and something felt right, even if I was in pain in most of the classes I took.
When I solicited my teachers’ feedback, they told me that most of our lives are spent in forwarding bends, so more forward bending would only exacerbate my herniated discs. I began working on traction exercises, hamstrings flexibility, abdominal toning and backward bends. With their support, I was 100% pain-free in 18 months.
That was back in the early 2000s. Since then, I’ve had two pregnancies with no back pain. I live on a small homestead and we heat with wood that we harvest, split, haul, and stack, and I have no back pain.
The back pain recovery is a big draw for my students and a massive positive for me in my practice and my life. I came to this yoga to heal and be fit, but what I get from it is far beyond my expectations.
I’ve healed my pain and eliminated my seasonal and pet allergies. I’ve maintained my strength and flexibility into my forties. I have experienced two healthy pregnancies with no major issues. I’ve controlled stress, depression, and anxiety and been able to navigate the ups and downs of my life with the steady constant of my practice.
Above all of that, I have learned to love myself from the inside out. Showing up on the mat every day has taught me to love, appreciate, and respect myself: however I arrive and whatever I can do. By cultivating respect and compassion for myself, I’ve learned to do the same for my fellow humans and I am a much better person, neighbor, friend, partner, colleague than I was seventeen years ago when I took my first class.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
I’ve been teaching yoga for fifteen years, fourteen of those as a small business owner. It’s particularly challenging in our culture to be a woman in small business and I’ve had to fight much of the way for respect, to be heard, and to get what I need.
The adages about an “old boys club” are unfortunately as true as they are repeated. Once, I paid a deposit on a 225k BTU HVAC unit. When it arrived, it was only 60k BTUs and not enough for our purposes. After a lengthy conversation where they told me I thought I wanted it, but was wrong, the contractor finally conceded to order the right unit by saying, “Guess we’re just gonna give the bitch what she wants.”
It’s nothing compared to the barriers faced by people of color, and women of color in particular. We can do better as a culture and therefore we must do better. We have a responsibility to remove barriers of entry, to change the conversation, to support underrepresented populations to gain entry to the field and to speak up when discrimination occurs.
What should we know about Blaze Yoga and Pilates? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
I own a Hot Yoga and Pilates studio on the Seacoast of New Hampshire. We’re known for our ability to help any person of any level of fitness or wellness meet their goals. We help elite athletes improve performance and we help people with chronic illness or pain take control of their lives and their health once again.
It doesn’t matter what you’re looking to transform in your life: health, fitness, wellness, stress, mood, self-worth and more. If you’re willing to show up, we can help you create change.
All of our teachers have a minimum of 500 certification hours. That means they’ve all undergone intensive study in the field of yoga therapy. All of our Pilates teachers are also yoga instructors. We spend a tremendous amount of time as a team engaged in continuing education and strategizing best practices to help each of our clients.
We’re also known for our ground-breaking work in the field of Yoga and Recovery. Our exploratory study in 2015 showed a 67% reduction in Post Acute Withdrawal Symptoms. PAWS is the leading cause of relapse. If we can get people feeling good, there’s a strong chance we can help support them in staying clean.
To give a little perspective, we expect an efficacy rate in depression medication of less than a third. Mass General is in the middle of a double-blind, multi-year, on-going study on hot yoga and depression that shows a direct negative correlation between a number of classes taken and reduction in symptoms.
Who do you look up to? How have they inspired you?
My lead yoga mentor is Emmy S. Cleaves. She was recently featured in the movie, Lives Well Lived. (https://www.lives-well-lived.com/) She was imprisoned in a Polish work camp before the start of WWII and when her family was released, they were separated. Conditions in her native Latvia were so bad under Stalin that she was unable even to write home for decades to see if any of her family survived.
She has been teaching this yoga for over 40 years and is a living example of the power of yoga. She’s a brilliant woman who has maintained her practice and even in her 90s can still sit in lotus and stand on her head. She has a keen eye and a wealth of knowledge, education, and experience that allows her to get to the root of a student’s issue with just a glance and a few sharp words.
If I could grow up and be another public figure, that would be Ruth Bader Ginsberg. She’s a brilliant wit and rules with intelligence and heart in a field dominated by men. She is a ground-breaker, a thought-leader, and a role model for us all. It doesn’t hurt, either, that she can hold a forearm plank for a full minute.
Pricing:
Contact Info:
- Address: Blaze Yoga and Pilates
800 Islington Street
Portsmouth, NH 03801 - Website: www.blazenh.com
- Phone: 803-430-6222
- Email: sara@blazenh.com
- Instagram: @blazeyoganh
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/byp2002
- Twitter: @byportsmouth
Image Credit:
James Rogers
Getting in touch: BostonVoyager is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
