Check Out Todd Meyers’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Todd Meyers.

Hi Todd, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Well, I have many stories, but I think you mean just the Yoga story. And it all starts with a roommates video tape of Rodney Yee doing yoga and my curiosity. I literally knew nothing about Yoga, I hadn’t even heard of a downward dog, but I started practicing to the video tape, it was a short 25 minute set of basic sun salutations and within a couple weeks I started noticing how good I was feeling physically after practicing with the tape. There were several other tapes and DVDs to follow and for several years, I would practice by myself at home to them. My yoga practice grew when my wife Sarah got involved with yoga teaching in 2010 and I started going to public classes, realizing how very limited, my practice had actually been. The added depth of poses, and the infinite number of adjustments one can make to enhance the practice became very apparent. So my asana practice really grew through those years. Then in 2021, during the pandemic, Sarah acquired her own yoga studio (Soul Tree) and I thought I should take her YTT class so that I could be as savvy as I could at yoga, since I would likely be pretty active with our studio. This process of learning to be a teacher enhanced my practice on such a grand scale. It showed me the eight limbs of yoga, how yoga went way beyond just the physical postures. I have always been a student of wisdom and spirituality, and dove right into these added concepts of meditation, pranayama, and general mindfulness. I have been teaching my own class at Soul tree studio for about 2 1/2 years, and that has been an amazing growth process. It always amazes me at how big of a learning curve it is to stand in front of people and teach yoga. I pretty much just feel like I’m coming into my own right now. I am currently taking the 300 hour YTT at soul tree, and that is just making things even more profound, learning yoga from many different angles, from many different, great teachers, some of them from very old lineages

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Well ya, mostly a smooth road, my practice has evolved slowly and naturally, until the teaching part… if there was any kind of rough patch it was in the early days of standing up in front and nervously guiding people through postures with a horrible case of imposter syndrome.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’m not sure I would call myself a specialist, but my (hopefully) unique angle on yoga is to teach strength and complexity using simple poses, forward fold, halfway lift, samastitihi, plank, etc can all be intense and challenging, strength and flexibility building poses with the proper cueing and holding… I also want to move with the approach that yoga is for everyone, not just the hyper flexible or just the fringe new-agey types. One doesn’t have to “twist into a pretzel” to feel the benefits of yoga… yoga should be practiced by many more people, if people were open to it, it might just save us from ourselves. Ideally, I would love to break down those barriers many have about yoga and yoga culture, getting more people to see the benefits for themselves and for their lives and being able to get past whatever preconceived notions they have.

Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
Well, of course it all starts with Rodney Yee on video, his style and presence made it feel easy and comfortable to start practicing yoga…

Then, of course, my wife and partner Sarah Woods… she is the closest thing to a guru that I have. She has become a master at teaching yoga classes, but moreso as a teacher of teachers in YTT. I steal her stuff constantly 😀. She is super knowledgeable about postures, but all of the subtle body elements of yoga as well.

Others include Asha Wolf and Eddie Modestini who have taught me the value of cueing verbally toward deepening our poses.

On the subtle, spiritual side, I would shout out to Manoj Shalam and Ram Dass.. along with Sarah Woods these teachers of the lessons of the spirit have had a profound effect on me…

Contact Info:

• Website: https://soultreecolorado.com