Conversations with Bryan Kest

Today we’d like to introduce you to Bryan Kest.

Bryan, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
Aloha, I am Bryan Kest, owner of poweryoga.com, located in the digital world. I am 57 years old and I was born in Cleveland, OH and raised in the suburbs of Detroit, MI. I was very fortunate to move to Hawaii at the age of 14. It was in Hawaii that I was even more fortunate to meet David Williams at David’s and Brad Ramsey’s class. David was the first person to bring Ashtanga Yoga to the world outside of India. Brad became an incredibly influential example of how to be a man and a yogi.

I first started leading yoga classes at age 20 when I was invited by a clinic who specialized in eating disorders to share my practice with their clients. The clinic, called Esteem Clinic (in Santa Monica, Ca.) was so happy with the results that they offered me more clients, and a yoga career was born.

At the age of 24, I entered my first ten-day Goenka Vipassana meditation course, after returning from living in India, where I studied with K. Patthabi Jois, before it was a trendy thing to go to India and study yoga. When I was there, it was just me, my traveling mate, and Patthabi Jois, all by ourselves. Upon my return, I enrolled in the Goenka course; being informed through Vipassana meditation, my Ashtanga yoga practice began morphing from its generic Ashtanga sequence into something more personal. In a lot of ways, this is the definition of Power Yoga: freedom and discovery! This is what I meant when I coined the term Power Yoga.

I was very much inspired by Goenka. The practice he shared is profound and his delivery is equally profound. For me, his donation model touched me deeply and said to me so much more than simply “give what you can give.” I immediately thought, why can’t I run a yoga studio in the same way? Welcome to Santa Monica Power Yoga & Meditation. We were a donation-based studio for decades at my Santa Monica studio.

My Santa Monica yoga studio was unique, not only in our donation concept. Our studio was created to give yoga instructors a space to share their practice without the need to conform to a studio lineage. Instructors simply rent time slots, while keeping all donations. Within these time slots, the space is theirs. This created an eclectic group of experienced yoga instructors who seem to carry a similar torch. Most all of these instructors are now sharing their gifts on poweryoga.com

My studio-based and online yoga classes are truly a multi-dynamic experience–a confluence of movements combining a balanced sequence with all elements of physical exercise, mindfulness, moderation and meditation. All of these are within a supportive dialogue developed to empower the practitioner. The distinct objective is strengthening the benevolent and eradicating the malevolent.

Poweryoga.com offers online yoga classes, class schedules, instructor bios, my event calendar, informative blogs and more. It is a resource for personal, consistent yoga practice at home, and we hope you join us.

Aloha,

Bryan Kest

PS: A portion of the proceeds from Power Yoga Online is given to these charities:

Children’s Tumor Foundation

Smile Train

Veterans Yoga Project
Reviews
94% recommend (498 Reviews)

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Running a yoga studio or any business on donation means that you have to care more about giving to others than making a shit load of money. And although that was an easy concept for me to embrace it was much harder to convince my instructors. The ones that could embrace it stayed with me the other ones moved on. And as our community embraced it there was enough money in the donation box to take care of everybody. Of course it was many other struggles as there are with all businesses employees don’t always act and behave the way you would like them to, money can be tight and bills need to get paid, … Homeless people defecating at our Studio entrance and of course traffic.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am really happy about the donation concept as part of the impetus to do this was to show people that a business can run and be successful giving to the community instead of taking from the community. It was so fulfilling making our services available to all people regardless of their finances or income. It was probably the only place in LA that you would see famous actors and homeless people right next to each other. It was beautiful and it was appreciated by all. What we offered was yoga classes which means we offered a place for people to relax and de-stress all while touching themselves everywhere with love and care which is the objective of these yoga poses. By the end of the class you felt purged of all stress and tension and you were tingling from head to toe as you use these creative movements to touch every place in your body and every range of motion. The objective was not fitness it was wellness and in doing so we also educated the community pertaining to wellness. What set us apart from other yoga studios was this philosophy along with the donation concept.

Alright so before we go can you talk to us a bit about how people can work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
I am invited to teach yoga all over the world so far I have taught and 46 states and 32 countries on six continents so anybody who would like to invite me to share this beautiful poweryoga at their studio they can contact us through our website poweryoga.com will bring in teachers and record their class for our website but for this they would have to be intensively vetted by me. I’m always open to collaborations I guess people would just have to get creative and figure out how they’d like to collaborate with me.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://poweryoga.com
• Instagram: bryankestpoweryoga
• Facebook: Bryan Kest’s Power Yoga
• Youtube: Power Yoga