Courtesy of Sheena Sharma
Sheena Sharma.
- Sheena Sharma is a yoga teacher, freelance writer, and dog mom living in Austin, Texas; you can follow her on Instagram.
- After making the decision to move from Austin to Philadelphia to be with her then-boyfriend, her and her ex packed up her things and dog and set out.
- En route to Philadelphia, they broke up - and, when she returned to Austin, she was laid off from her job.
- She signed up for a yoga teacher training and found meaning in it - and started teaching classes to one client, and then four more.
- She's now a full-time yoga instructor and financially independent, and has grown her business through social media and sticking with a daily routine.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
My ex and I didn't have the perfect relationship, but we loved each other. We had been in an on-and-off, long-distance relationship for three years before I made the decision to pick up my life in Austin and move to Philadelphia to be with him.
In Austin, I worked full time at a small media company. For the most part, I liked the city and my job enough to stay. But the struggle that plagues so many women - Should I choose my job, or follow a man for his? - plagued me, too.
Eventually, I decided I loved my ex more than I loved my job. I broke the news to my boss, who had graciously agreed to let me work remotely from Philly. Since I was the digital editor for a startup, my job could technically be done from outside the office. However, I assured my boss I'd fly into Austin for quarterly editorial meetings and hop on Skype for weekly check-ins. It was an all-around pretty sweet deal: I could move without losing my job.
When summer arrived, so did moving day. My ex and I packed up my things, my dog, and hopped into my Honda Civic.
Boy, was I unprepared for what would happen next.
Somewhere in rural Virginia, an argument erupted that ended up breaking us up - and showed me parts of my ex I hadn't seen before, but that I needed to see. Right then and there, we separated. My ex took a cab the rest of the way to Philly, and I turned around to begin the trek back to Austin with my dog.
I literally couldn't believe what was happening. I was in shock. I just wanted to get home as quickly as possible. But I had a long drive ahead of me, and it didn't make sense to fast-forward this part of my life.
The great thing about a breakup? It automatically puts the rest of your life into focus. So I used the cross-country road trip as inspiration to make a plan for my new life. This included filling my journal with article ideas and vision boards for the rest of the year.
There was just a few hundred dollars left in my bank account, but I figured I owed it to myself to spend what I had on making a little vacation out of my trip back. It'd be financially tight, but I told myself I'd get my finances in order once I got back to Austin.
My furry friend and I stayed in Airbnbs in Roanoke, Knoxville, and Memphis - each with its own unique, quirky character - and visited my family in Dallas before finally returning to Austin. I'd left my furniture from my apartment in Austin at my mom's house in Dallas, so luckily, I was able to grab them and bring them back to Austin with me. Homelessness evaded me, too: I was lucky enough to find a girl on Craigslist that was looking to sublet her apartment in Austin ASAP, so I slid right into her lease.
So I picked up right where I left off before the breakup. But just when I returned to Austin and got comfortable with the fact that life was changing, my boss dropped a bombshell on me: She laid me off, mostly because the company was struggling financially and it could no longer afford to keep my position.
I was dumbfounded. I'd come back to Austin ready to work three times harder than I'd ever worked - only now, there was nothing to work for.
My summer had started off with so much promise: a different city, a serious relationship, a new life. But it had turned into a time to grieve.
As if the emotional turmoil of everything wasn't enough, I was financially strapped, too. I had no cushion to fall back on. So I got creative, picking up temporary gigs in retail and copywriting, and even donating plasma at local centers to stay afloat.
After giving myself a couple of weeks to cry and process everything, I realized a major transformation needed to happen in my life. That's when I enrolled in a four-week, intensive yoga teacher training.
I'd heard about people doing yoga teacher trainings and coming out of them transformed. My intention was to leave the training with clarity on my breakup and a foundation to start fresh - both in my personal and professional lives.
Teacher trainings can cost an average of $3,000. But the yoga studio I chose to do my training at was able to offer me a payment plan, which was all I could afford at the time.
Yoga teacher training was everything I expected and more. Because the course was 200 hours crammed into four weeks, I was spending 10 hours a day, five days a week studying yoga and meditation. It's as physically and emotionally exhausting as it sounds.
Every day was structured similarly: We'd start off with a one-hour vinyasa yoga flow, followed by a 30-minute meditation. By week two, I began to notice how clear headed I was becoming. During my meditations, I not only began to heal myself through my breakup; I was also able to create space for myself to figure out what the hell it was I wanted for myself.
By week three, I had an epiphany while meditating: I didn't just love to do yoga - I was meant to gift it to others.
Yoga teacher training ended, and I slowly began to build my business. The plan was to create custom classes for individuals around Austin.
My first client was a girl that slid into my DMs on Instagram. Luckily, teaching yoga doesn't require anything but your own body, a mat, and blocks, which I already had. I brought my props over to her place and trained her for an hour. We began to see each other three times a week, and I asked her to spread the word about me to friends and coworkers.
Within three months, I had four regular clients and was teaching an average of seven yoga classes at various studios across town.
Here's how I built my business - and how you can build one, too: