Today we’d like to introduce you to Maeve McCaffrey.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
After the birth of my son in January 2018, I was slowly building my yoga and fitness career back up while being thoughtful of how much time I was committing myself away from him. I’d been teaching yoga and fitness for 25 years at this point, and while I had a number of other career jobs while continuing to teach yoga, juggling motherhood with my love for teaching was harder than I expected! I had never felt so torn before. I wanted to be back in the studios with my students because teaching makes me feel alive and joyful, but I found myself rushing home to spend time with my baby, worried I’d miss something.
By March 2020, I had found a pretty good balance teaching classes and maximizing my time with my son, and then COVID took the legs out from under LA. I was slated to teach on a Monday morning at Equinox and Sunday night, word came through that everything was shutting down. Three days later, I decided to lead a yoga class on Zoom or Facebook (I can’t remember which at this point) as a way to connect with my students and friends around the country. It was really powerful. In the weeks that followed, I started teaching daily classes on Instagram, Facebook, and Zoom. One of my employers, YogaWorks, also started their streaming platform and my classes were being pumped out all over the world to a base of students they had amassed.
As terrifying and sad as COVID was, the silver lining was my ability to continue connecting with my students, meet new ones and have this expansive time with my son at two years old I wouldn’t have had otherwise. For years, my students had asked me to record classes for them to do while traveling and I couldn’t get my act together to make it happen. Now I have amassed a library of over 600 classes! I have connected with students from all over the world and many of my students left LA during COVID and the joke was that I was traveling with them wherever they went!
Despite being back in the studio with both YogaWorks and Equinox, I have continued streaming and posting yoga and fitness classes most days of the week! You can find my vast library on my Website and Youtube page.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
The technology of streaming classes definitely was transitional. How to make it sound better, look better, export a video for use later. The stream dropping for music copyright infringement or videos being blocked. Slow internet. Zoom! Need I say more? Finding a space in my house with the family home and cats insisting on being in the video to me insisting they are in the video. I don’t have a dedicated space to shoot from, instead, I move our dining table and it serves as a platform for all my equipment, and I roll out my mat in a space we actually live in.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I teach movement: mobility training, yoga, meditation, breath work, fitness and often a combination of these things. I began teaching fitness 29 years ago; yoga about 23. This “the thing” I would keep doing if I won the lottery. I am no longer unique as an instructor that teaches many modalities, and I think if you asked my students, what makes me different is how what we do feels. How they feel about themselves. I am a movement program designer. I sequence classes to get the most out of you and I think they are often surprised by what they can do. I want students to be interested, active observers in what they are doing, mind and body. These classes are not to work off what you ate last night or to aspire to be something else. They are to show you how great you already are and to commit to a lifetime of moving not just your physical body but your thoughts, your breath, your vision on your limitations and your capabilities.
Can you talk to us about how you think about risk?
I aspire to be a risk taker. I see it as admirable and a great teacher. Unfortunately, I fear I play it pretty safe most of the time. I’m not proud of that. Example in point is how long it took me to begin logging class videos for my students. For years I intended to move forward only to see so many of my esteemed peers already be fully in the game when COVID hit, leaving me to merely react. While I pivoted very fast, I could have already been poised to point students there.
I currently have some goals that feel risky to me, so I think this conversation is well-timed!
Pricing:
- On-Demand classes Donation Based
- Live Classes Donation Based
- YouTube Free!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.maevemccaffrey.com
- Instagram: @maevemcc
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MaeveYogaFitness/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MovementbyMaeve
