my wisest teacher
meet KATHY KACENA
Jim looked at a large industrial room with small windows and a hole in the floor and said, “Do you want to make this into a yoga studio?”
I thought I was creating a beautiful room where I could teach. Then people began coming to me and asking whether they could teach there too. And suddenly, I had another studio.
That is how so much of this life has happened. I take one step without knowing exactly where it will lead. Something opens. Someone appears. The next piece arrives.
I don't know exactly what this chapter will become. Do we ever?
I only know I am not finished. The ever-so-slightly-desperate seeker in me is looking forward to more rooms to walk into, people to meet, books to underline, music to play, and more of this practice to share.
So I will keep taking the next step before I know exactly where it leads.
The universe has a bigger imagination than me.
For the first half of my life, I built in the direction I thought I was supposed to. I sought success through corporate validation. I performed and achieved. I've always been a natural leader, someone who can make a decision and make things happen.
I was also living almost entirely outside myself.
For twenty-five years, I had been running. Both literally and otherwise. I ran long distances every day. My body was breaking down and someone suggested I try yoga.
Not the most exciting gateway, I know, but to me that only adds to its charm. It's not always the biggest moments that have the biggest impacts. It often isn't.
A teacher at Peachtree Yoga asked whether I had ever heard of Yin Yoga. I hadn't. Paul Grilley was offering a workshop in Atlanta at a time when hardly anyone knew what Yin was, so I went.
I got onto the floor, came into a seated butterfly, and knew something deeply and intuitively.
This is the missing piece. This is what you need to come back to yourself and to life.
Viniyoga. Chinese medicine. Teacher training. Yin. These deep wells that would shape the next decades of my life all appeared within two or three years.
I call myself a late bloomer. The benefit of beginning late is that you do not have much time to waste.
One year after walking along that beach at Maya Tulum, unable to do the yoga and still unsure who I was, I returned to the same place as a teacher.
I filled the retreat in about three weeks by following people out of class with flyers and telling them they had to come. This was before websites and social media. We returned to Maya Tulum for fifteen years.
People didn't come again and again and tell their friends because I could hold a headstand for ten minutes. (I couldn't.)
People aren't looking for perfection, or a performance, from someone offering yoga. They are often drawn to the person who loves it, who knows what the practice can do because it changed her own life, and who cannot help but share it.
Eventually, my teaching partner and I opened Yoga Samadhi Atlanta. When my husband, Jim, and I moved to the Gorge, I thought I would simply teach wherever I could.
And for a while, that is exactly what I did. I taught in random places, clearing furniture out of rooms and lobbies and putting it back when we were finished.
Then our renters moved out of a building we owned.
I was fortunate that the first place I found was a Viniyoga school in Atlanta. It was a very breath-focused style. We weren't perfecting poses. We were learning to become embodied.
As an overachiever and an overdoer, it was exactly the practice I needed. A more athletic style would only have continued my unbalanced lifestyle.
I had only been practicing for a short time when I joined a retreat at Maya Tulum, and I couldn't do the yoga they were offering. People were flipping around and standing on their heads.
I had come from a Viniyoga class where we were breathing and moving our arms up and down. This was serious. I was intimidated, embarrassed, and not entirely sure what I had signed up for.
To pass the time and soothe my nerves, I walked on the beach.
I had finally gotten far enough away from my ordinary life, and quiet enough inside myself, that I could not avoid hearing what was there.
You are not happy. You are not doing what you are supposed to be doing. Go home. Quit your job. Figure out who you are.
So I went home and did exactly that. I quit my job with no plan for what would come next.
It was free fall.
Then the pieces started falling into place.
IT WAS ONE OF THOSE MOMENTS THAT DIVIDES LIFE INTO BEFORE AND AFTER, like so many of the important ones do.
It was a Wednesday in 1998. I know exactly where I was.
cozy up for
storytime
viniyoga
/ˌvɪ-ni-ˈyoʊ-gə/ (vin-ee-YO-gah)
noun, Sanskrit
yoga adapted to the individual — practice, breath, and sequence tailored to who you are and what you need in this moment, not the other way around.
hills i will die on..
(CHANGE MY MIND! 💜)
Chocolate is a primary food group.
And I regret nothing.
A new scarf is the secret to a new outfit.
I have a drawer full and I'm still looking for more.
Books are meant to be held.
I want to feel their weight in my hands, smell the pages, and hear them turn.
IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER 💜
Laughing · Early to bed early to rise · Trees, trees, trees · Animals of all kinds · Sleeping next to an open window · Peaches · Continuing to learn · Human spirit stories and movies · Meeting new people and learning their stories · Piddling in small health food stores · White cotton shirts · Human touch, hugs, massage · Fall weather and fall colors · Hiking the trails near my home and meeting new dogs (and their humans) · Going barefoot · The smell of fresh cut grass · Funky reading glasses, I search them out everywhere I go · A drawer full of bandannas (always room for one more) 💜
these are a few of my favorite things..
my journey to yogi..
I was born on a peach farm and raised in rural Arkansas, surrounded by the kind of community that gave me a firm foundation for everything that came after.
Viniyoga, Chinese medicine, meditation, teacher training, and Yin all came into my life within a few short years. I had found the deep wells I would spend the next several decades drawing from.
One year after walking along the beach at Maya Tulum unable to do the yoga, I returned to the same place as a teacher. We kept returning for fifteen years.
After twenty-five years of daily distance running, someone suggested I try yoga. Six months later, I was walking along a beach in Mexico, preparing to go home, quit my corporate job, and figure out who I was.
My teaching partner and I opened Yoga Samadhi Atlanta. It would be the first of two studios I never entirely set out to open.
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After moving to the Gorge, I taught wherever I could, often clearing furniture out of rooms and lobbies before class.
I no longer run the studio, but I still teach there, in the same room, in the same timeslot I've held for eighteen years, surrounded by the community that grew there.
I’m finding new rooms, meeting new people, and staying open.
This just feels like I've discovered a wide open door, that I didn’t even know was there.
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1949
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1998
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1996-2000
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1999-2014
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2005-2007
2003
(ish. who remembers anymore!)
The monks find Yoga Samadhi
A shared name leads to Tuesday night meditation, the beginning of a community tradition that continues today. Learn more.
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2010
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today
An industrial room with small windows and a hole in the floor became Yoga Samadhi Columbia Gorge
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2007
