Today we’d like to introduce you to Pili Bailey.
So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
A little bit about me. I always feel overwhelmed by trying to summarize my life in a few paragraphs. There is so much I could share, but I will try to share the parts of my life that I feel have led me to the place I am today. I am a Los Angeles native. I grew up in Rancho Palos Verdes. I grew up in a musical family, both my parents were professional singers and we were always surrounded by musicians and singers. My mother says that I started singing before I could talk. I loved to hike around the hills on the Peninsula. I absolutely loved being outdoors and I was known to disappear for hours exploring nature. My greatest loves as a child were music and movement. I loved to move my body and would often make up dances that seemed to be some combination of modern dance and ballet. Not that I had any formal dance training whatsoever. As a child, I was also deeply spiritual. I had a sense that I was connected to something greater and deeper than myself. My early memories are of me staring up into the sky, imagining what God looked like, and speaking to God like a close friend. I also really enjoyed pretending to be a teacher. I would teach my dolls and any little kids I could recruit into my games. I had many loves as a child, among them dancing, hiking, nature exploration, singing, and contemplating the nature of God. Wow, looking back on my childhood, it seems pretty clear I was destined to be a yoga teacher. HA.
My journey to yoga came as a result of me seeking to unify all the parts of myself. In college I studied Biochemistry and had aspirations to be a medical doctor. Towards the end of my college career, I decided to pursue a graduate degree in Organic Chemistry. It was while I was conducting research in the lab at Georgetown University, that I experienced my first yoga class. I enjoyed the state of quiet and relaxation that I found in my body and mind after this yoga class. But it was another 2 years before I took another yoga class. While in graduate school I began singing at a church in Virginia and later I was hired to be a music director for this church. While working for the church, I began to deeply develop my inner world, and found that yoga was an integral part of the way I experienced my faith and my connection to God.
Yoga means ‘to yolk or union’, and I have definitely experienced the power of yoga to draw together and help me to make sense of all the various roles I play in my life. A few of the roles in my life now are as a wife, a mother, a chemist, a yoga teacher, an aromatherapist. I earned a Masters in Chemistry from Georgetown University in 2003. I became a yoga teacher in 2006. In 2015, I completed a second 200 hr yoga teacher training through YogaWorks here in Pasadena, CA. In 2018, I continued my training with a Yoga Therapy program at Loyola Marymount University. Yoga has had a profound impact on my life, helping me to move gracefully between all the roles I play while cultivating mindfulness to be present in each moment.
The lessons I learned on my mat have propelled me into a deeper self-awareness and helped me to show up more authentically as my true self in the world. Yoga has created a greater sense of ease in my body and my mind. Yoga has given me the tools to cope with pain, depression, childhood trauma, and the stress of daily life. Before I practiced yoga, I was living under extreme stress related to career and job uncertainty in the early 2000s. During this time I also suffered from severe mood fluctuations that later was diagnosed as depression and anxiety due to childhood trauma. I began to practice yoga regularly around 2004. At the time, I saw yoga as a really good physical exercise that somehow also helped me to deal with the demands of a stressful career as a Patent Examiner at the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Over time, I began to experience the transformational effects of yoga not only in my physical body but also in my mental and emotional body as well. I was hooked.
Yoga has been instrumental in my ability to deal with past trauma and find emotional healing. Yoga has also helped me to heal physically as well as emotionally after the trauma of an unplanned C-section at childbirth and postpartum depression. I have experienced the power of yoga to heal the body, the mind, and emotions. This is why I am so passionate about working with women, to help them to find the joy of being in their bodies again. The profound impact that my yoga practice has had on my life is something that I want to share with other women who may be in pain, who may be suffering from depression, who may be having a hard time adjusting to the ever changing state of their body.
Another major contributor to my health and well-being has been the use of essential oils in my daily life to support my physical and emotional health. My background as a chemistry, has had an interesting effect on me. Since working in the organic chemistry lab, I have become hyper-sensitive the level of synthetic chemicals that we are surrounded by on a daily basis. I believe that many of these environmental toxins are creating the states of dis-ease that we experience on a regular basis. It was after graduating from Georgetown University, that I began to look for less toxic alternatives to many of the body care products that I was using. I began using essential oils for body care around 2004. After the birth of my son, I again became interested in the power of essential oil therapy (aromatherapy) to fortify the various systems of the body. Using my background as a patent examiner, I began to study aromatherapy and particularly essential oil chemistry and the way it works with the body’s biochemistry to heal the body and the support the emotional body as well. As a yoga teacher, I began to identify how essential oils combined with specific yoga exercises could support the immune system, elevate a low mood, soothe tight, tense, sore muscles, and help create a calming atmosphere for yoga and meditation. I furthered my education by studying aromatherapy textbooks and taking aromatherapy training courses with some of the world renowned Aromatherapist such as Robert Tisserand, David Crowe, and Andrea Butje. I believe my chemistry training has uniquely qualified me to educate my clients on the health benefits of essential oil therapy. I have been working with women by combining yoga and aromatherapy to support better sleep, relieve anxiety, uplift the mood, and soothe chronic pain for the past 3 years.
Yoga has helped me to embrace the ever-changing state of my body with love and acceptance. I want to spread that message to every woman I know. If we only have this one body, and this one life, I believe that yoga can show us how to stay present in each moment and receive the ups and the downs of life with equanimity and gratitude. My mission and goal is to help women to live healthier, happier, more stress-free lives by equipping them with the tools of yoga and aromatherapy.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Let’s see. I believe my biggest obstacle has been my mindset. The desire to teach yoga again came about a year after I gave birth to my son. At the time, I was struggling to connect with my body and the changes that had occurred due to being pregnant and C-section. I had always been a pretty healthy person, and physical fitness had been a part of my sense of identity. After the birth of my son, I didn’t recognize my own body, and I was in constant pain, in my back, my hips, my neck, and shoulders. I felt like my body was breaking down and I felt like I needed yoga to help put me back together again.
After I graduated from Yoga Teacher Training, I struggled with feeling like I belonged in the LA yoga scene. It is highly saturated, and in my own mind, I didn’t look like the typical LA yoga teacher. For one thing, I was not a skinny, mini, twenty-something, in tight and bright yoga clothes. I was entering my 40’s, living in a bigger body than I was used to, and learning how to navigate the changes in my middle-aged body.
I am grateful that one of my teacher trainers, was also a woman over 40, with young children. Seeing her show up, fully embodied, and able to guide me in this new phase of my life as a woman gave me the inspiration to be a yoga teacher for women over 40. My yoga practice taught me how to embrace and accept myself, the changes in my body, the changes in my life as a woman, wife, mother, entrepreneur and business owner, with gratitude and equanimity.
I learned that I can trust my body, that my body is adaptable and that I can do more than my mind sometimes would lead me to believe. I want to help other women find this truth in their own lives. I want to reach women in their 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and beyond. I want to help them find the joy of being in their bodies again. I would say another major challenge was learning the business aspects of yoga.
In an ever-changing market, where so many people are chasing after the new shinny thing, the trends in yoga, I had to really sit down and define my mission, my passion, and my purpose in becoming a yoga entrepreneur. Then I had to learn how to effectively communicate it so that the women who needed my help would be able to find Essential Yoga Space.
Another challenge was learning how to say no thank you to opportunities that came my way in order to fulfill the mission of Essential Yoga Space, to help women to discover the joy of being in their bodies using a combination of yoga and aromatherapy. There are so many different avenues that one can go down when they are growing their yoga business.
Narrowing my focus was really challenging for me in the beginning. I was teaching all over town. I was teaching kid’s yoga. I was teaching Yoga aromatherapy workshops. I was being asked to come up with catchy names for my style of yoga. I found myself quickly spread thin, and moving away from the main aspects of yoga that really lead to transformation, breath awareness, self-study/self-awareness, and focus and concentration.
When I made the decision to define my yoga offering in very traditional terms, I teach alignment-based Hatha Yoga; I began to feel more aligned in my own purpose and mission. When I made the decision to shift from teaching public classes with 15-20 people or more in a class, to focusing on teaching individual, one-on-one private yoga to women over 40, I found the path where I could have the most positive impact and affect the greatest transformation in the clients that came to me.
The majority of my challenges were self-imposed as many of the challenges in life tend to be. We can not control the shifts and changes that life throws at us, but we can control the way who chose to think about them, receive them, and respond to them. This is the greatest life lesson that my yoga practice has taught me, and I feel compelled to pass this lesson to the women who work with me.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about Essential Yoga Space – what should we know?
My business is called Essential Yoga Space. I specialize in working with women in their 40’s, 50’s and 60’s, women who are living with more experience in their bodies. I love working with women who are coming to yoga for the first time, women who feel for whatever reason that attending a public yoga class is not for them, and women who want to restore the joy of living in their body again.
We work together one-on-one in a training studio that I partner with here in Pasadena, called 626 Fitness. My clients come to me in various stages of ability, and we work together to design the appropriate yoga and aromatherapy package for their needs. To see the greatest results, my clients see me two-three times per week for at least three-six months.
My goal is to get these women feeling confident in their body, and confident in their yoga practice so that they can develop a home-based practice. Yoga is not just for physical fitness, it is also for mental wellness, emotional well-being. The lessons we learn on our mat during our private practice is where the lasting transformation occurs.
What sets Essential Yoga Space apart, is the individuality, the focus on supporting the client’s progress towards their own personal goals. We teach women the tools to dissolve stress and anxiety, to develop self-awareness and to manage common health concerns with yoga and aromatherapy.
Another aspect that sets Essential Yoga Space apart and makes me different from other yoga teachers is that I am a yoga teacher with a Masters in Chemistry who practices as an aromatherapist. I educate my clients on the ways they can use essential oil therapy to support the various systems of their body, circulatory, endocrine, lymphatic (immune system), nervous system, etc.
Using my knowledge as a chemist and training as an aromatherapist, I help my clients develop essential oil programs that can support their individual needs. I help my clients and their families to live healthier more stress-free lives by showing them how to incorporate essential oils into their daily lives. I am proud to say that Essential Yoga Space has a reputation for great service and happier, healthier clients even after just one private yoga session.
I am proud that Essential Yoga Space has been welcomed to teach staff and upper-level management at Cal Tech, Urban Insight, five Keys Charter Schools, Alma Fuerte Public School. I have been asked to consult with companies on ways to improve the health and wellbeing of their employees by offering semi-private yoga lessons to staff and incorporating essential oil therapy to increase workplace satisfaction and productivity.
The research is clear, yoga and essential oils are powerful tools to improve overall health and emotional well-being. I am happy to be able to help my clients tap into these resources for greater wellness.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
The characteristics that I feel are most important to my success are honesty, authenticity, empathy, intuitiveness, clear communication, and a never-ending desire to help my clients get and stay well.
Contact Info:
- Address: 1021 E. Walnut Street, Suite 101 Pasadena, CA 91101
- Website: www.essentialyogaspace.com
- Phone: 626-578-5906
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/essentialyogaspace
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/essentialyogaspace
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/essential-yoga-space-pasadena
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