Today we’d like to introduce you to Missy Hoffman.
Missy, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I grew up in the Silicon Valley, back when Apple and Google were still just start-up companies. This entrepreneurial environment influenced me heavily. So even as a young woman, I always aspired to start my own business, and I knew deep down I was destined to inspire positive change in the lives of many.
But I began to encounter some big challenges at a young age. At just 13 years old, I was diagnosed with clinical depression and ulcerative colitis (a chronic autoimmune disease in the gastrointestinal tract). I struggled to conceive why I was constantly sick, and why my body didn’t operate normally.
I saw the best doctors in the field, all of whom were very kind to me. But none of them could answer some very simple questions like, “What is the underlying cause of this disease and what can I do to heal once and for all over the long-term?” Doctors told me that my condition was “uncurable” and that I would never be able to get off medications, which was incredibly frustrating and hard to fully conceive at just 13!
Upon entering my early twenties, with all my natural drive and determination, I graduated college as valedictorian with an accounting degree and entered the high-pressure business world of auditing, accounting, and finance. As I did, my condition grew worse and I struggled to keep up with the different layers of my health, my career, my relationships, and my happiness. While everything seemed perfect on paper, I felt like I was crumbling inside. I knew something had to change. In addition, I was constantly pushing myself to my edge, and always on “overdrive” mode. This resulted in several hospitalizations with panic attacks and colitis flare-ups. I totally failed to understand the connection between how our mental condition can significantly influence and impact our physical health.
So, by the time I found my way to a yoga class, I was going not because it was trendy, but because I was truly in need of deep healing and relief from a complex combination of ailments. While I had tried yoga a couple times before, I didn’t know that much about it, beyond the poses.
Luckily, I eventually wound up studying with Lorilee Gilmore, a very well-known Ashtanga yogi and Ayurvedic practitioner — and I got completely hooked. She was the first teacher who introduced me, not just to the physical elements of the practice, but to the 8-limb model of yoga philosophy and the ancient wisdom of Ayurveda. Her teachings reaffirmed my inherent value and wholeness as a human being, rather than casting me as some “abnormality.” I jokingly called her master class “church” because it was scheduled on Sundays at 9 AM — and I went religiously.
Coming from the medical world, where I was constantly told that I was “broken and needing fixing,” Lorilee’s teachings of yogic philosophy which said that we can “heal ourselves naturally,” really resonated with me. Over the next year or so, I dedicated all my free time to learning about and adopting a holistic yoga practice and healthy lifestyle habits. I learned about biomechanics, the autonomic nervous system, vegetarian Ayurvedic dietary principles, breathwork, meditation, chanting, and other holistic practices.
It was impossible to deny that the more I dedicated myself to my yoga practice, the more my health improved. These changes enabled me to bring my condition back into remission within a few months. After a year, I no longer needed medication — to my doctor’s great surprise!
That’s when my “light bulb” moment really hit. I realized that over my whole life, yoga was the only modality which consistently brought long-term relief (instead of masking symptoms with Band-Aid solutions). I became increasingly passionate about the science and art of wellness. This is how I decided to begin teaching others and sharing my passion for a healthy, holistic lifestyle. So I moved to Santa Monica, the mecca of yoga in America, to pursue the study, practice, and teaching of yoga in July 2014.
Has it been a smooth road?
As yoga has become increasingly sensationalist, commercial, and appearance-driven with the rise of social media, I wanted to reach others on a deeper level than that. So “my yoga” has always been rooted in the principle of honoring the wholeness inherent in each individual. That is to say, a therapeutic and healing intention underlies all of my teachings.
While transitioning from being yoga student to a yoga teacher was an organic, natural extension of my own personal healing journey — and a passion for helping others — my journey of transition from accounting to yoga therapist was definitely a bit of a bumpy ride!
Ditching your corporate job, creating your dream life, starting a successful business, mastering necessary skills at your craft, and dedicating yourself to a life of service around living your passion isn’t easy for anybody. It’s not supposed to be. In business school and my corporate career, so much of my self-worth was projected on being productive, completing tasks, thinking strategically to win out our competitors. In my spiritual life, I have come to learn that “pushing” isn’t always the best way to get things done or even the fastest path to progress. I’ve had to become aware of and slowly untangle these thinking patterns.
For a long time, I struggled to define exactly what was my focus and unique contribution to the world. My analytical accounting mind found countless ways to discredit my inner intuitive guidance —“yoga teachers don’t make any money, the market is oversaturated, why would you throw away all of that training in accounting?” To gain confidence and experience, I split my time between training yoga and working as an accounting consultant for about a year.
It’s popular for coaches to paint themselves as overnight successes, but the reality is that it simply doesn’t happen that way. Success is the cumulative result of many small steps. I didn’t just wake up one day and decide to be a full-time yoga therapist and acro yoga teacher. I got there through winding my way through many tangential explorations of similar subjects. Many times, I came to a fork in the road and took the path less traveled. For a while, I even thought I was going to become a dietitian, or psychologist. But the longer I looked at job descriptions, the more I knew that nobody was going to “give me the keys to the empire.” I had to create my own opportunities and truly walk my own path, if I were to successfully pioneer a new paradigm of healthcare and live out my most authentic calling in life.
So, I persisted towards a different concept of yoga, in studying its role in therapy and holistic healthcare. Yoga therapy serves a huge unmet need in giving people whose needs cannot be met in group yoga classes a safe outlet to cope with various ailments, conditions, and diseases. In addition, acro yoga was extremely attractive to me for its fluidity, grace, and sensuality. It has taught me so much as a practice of playfulness, intimacy, communication, and self-awareness. I decided to specialize in these areas.
I started off teaching friends and family for free, then charging barely anything, and then working my way up through studios. Finally this past year, I founded my own private clinical practice. I developed a signature program that treats all aspects of the mind, body, spirit —using scientifically-based therapeutic yoga techniques over a period of one to two months. It was a long and arduous process, but it paid off!
To be a successful yoga therapist and acro yoga coach, you must be your own boss, biggest cheerleader, dedicated practitioner, expert healer, and genuine “people” person. This was a huge risk but ended up being worth it. I now have comprehensive yoga therapy and holistic programs, dedicated to helping people from all walks of life.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Missy Kai Yoga – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
As a certified Yoga Therapy RX Instructor, AcroYoga Fit Coach, and Yoga Alliance registered 200-Hour Yoga Instructor, I am most known for my personalized, holistic yoga coaching programs. Increasingly, I am also becoming known for leading highly transformational workshops and immersions in the West LA area. I combine both Eastern therapeutic modalities and Western modern medicine to help relieve suffering from specific ailments or conditions, whether physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.
Specifically, I specialize in teaching stressed and busy professionals how to integrate simple self-care tools into everyday life, and also injury prevention and rehabilitation to different kinds of athletes. Many of my students come to me because nothing else has worked for them! In working with some of these more complex and chronic cases, over time, I have developed my own signature yoga therapy program and teaching philosophy.
I like to go deep with people and push them toward their greatest potentials in all areas of life. I’m most interested in deep, transformational healing. In working with my clients, we not only focus on poses, but we take into account sleep, diet, stress levels, meditation, relationships, work, and spirituality. This helps us to get a 360 degree look at all the aspects of body, mind, and spirit. Therefore, the program is unique depending on the individual, but we always start with an intake consultation to pinpoint the underlying causes of their stress/immobility/pain. From there, I recommend specific poses and techniques to bring that issue into balance and over the course of a series of sessions, we evaluate their progress to ensure our work together is in alignment with their goals and intentions.
Depending on the person, our sessions can incorporate physical yoga poses, breathwork and meditation. It varies person to person and even session to session, but sessions always begin with conversation to ensure we’re on the same page and to ascertain what would be most valuable to focus on in that day’s session. At the end of our time together, we compare their intake evaluation with their final evaluation to see the measurable, quantifiable results of our work together.
I am that kind of teacher who really cares. I want to know about your career, your daughter’s school project, your favorite band, your childhood, your divorce. I give extra time to students who need it, and will make students meditate and practice pranayama even if they don’t want to. I am the kind of teacher who is never “finished” or completely satisfied with the level of study and practice I have reached. I will hand-hold, but I don’t babysit. I hold my students completely accountable for their own healing. I am not fixing anyone, but simply reminding them of their inherent wholeness and wellbeing, just like Lorilee did for me.
Ultimately, it’s all based on the individual’s unique therapeutic needs. Their needs dictate my treatment plan. As a result, my clients are fully empowered with tangible scientifically-based tools and a logical method to gain a peace of mind — and it works!
I created my studio, Missy Kai Yoga Sanctuary in West Los Angeles, California, out of a vision to build an unconventional, serene, safe where people could go to receive services for healing. My clients tell me how much they love coming to the studio because it’s such a unique environment. It’s like a doctor’s office, a therapist’s office, and a yoga studio all-in-one, but specifically built for serving yoga therapy students one at a time. For some of my clients, who are extremely busy, especially parents with young children, coming to the Sanctuary is the only time in their life that they have to be still and breathe — literally!
Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
I love the weather, the beaches, the lifestyle, and the people! I mean, where else in the world are the best fashion stores, entertainment, yoga studios, and gourmet plant-based restaurants always just a Lift ride away?
West Los Angeles is also the mecca of yoga in America. The quality of instruction that I can access here is extremely rare. I am fortunate to have that right in my back yard at Loyola Marymount University in LA. Currently, I am working on acquiring my 1000-hour Certified Yoga Therapist license at Loyola Marymount University under my mentor, Dr. Larry Payne. Here I am training for four years total in pranayama, anatomy, physiology, psychology, Ayurveda, mindfulness-based stress reduction, clinical research, medication, trauma and PSTD, biomechanics, and many other areas under his guidance. Dr. Larry has been so helpful in connecting me to the top yoga teachers and medical practitioners in the world.
Los Angeles is a home to dreamers and doers. The city is known for its hustle and its people for their ambition. Expressed positively, it comes off as entrepreneurial. Expressed negatively, it comes off as selfish and opportunistic. It’s easy to get caught up in hype, but you can’t let all that overrule your inner guiding voice. It’s all about aligning your path to your heartfelt mission. Living here has taught me so much about focusing on building up strong relationships, mastering my own game, and maintaining strong confidence and belief in my capabilities.
Santa Monica is home to my “monkey tribe” at Original Muscle Beach in. Some of the top athletes, yogis, and acrobats in the world come through there regularly. I am proud to call this community my “home,” and am grateful for the constant reminders to simply “relax and enjoy life” while simultaneously inspiring my practice and my business up to the next level.
Pricing:
- Yoga Therapy Intake Assessment – $350/90 min intake session and personalized recommendations for holistic yoga therapy treatment
- Personal Yoga and Acro Yoga Coaching – $100 Special Intro Offer/60 min session (normally $125/hour)
- Holistic Health and Yoga Retreat on a Lavendar Farm – starting at $650 (early bird) for the weekend of July 1st-2nd
- Intro to Yoga Therapy Workshop – SoCal Hot Yoga Brentwood – 4-week series beginning 5/4 at 10 AM. $50 drop-in, $150 prepay all four weeks.
Contact Info:
- Address: 11321 Iowa Ave
Suite 8
Los Angeles CA 90025 - Website: www.missykaiyoga.com
- Phone: 310-907-9494
- Email: clientsupport@missykaiyoga.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/missykaiyoga
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/missykaiyoga
- Twitter: www.twitter.com/missykaiyoga
- Yelp: yelp.com/biz/missy-kai-yoga-los-angeles
- Other: Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1223178467758381/?ref=br_rs
Image Credit:
John Higgins
Jonathan Rea
Steven Detray
Ira Meyers
Darius Mrckonic
Jason Abraham
Getting in touch: VoyageLA 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.
