"I was hooked. I had a new life plan..." Erica Kafka joined the Cambio Teaching Team in mid 2019 but started her journey 20 years ago. We are honored to not only have her leading Hot Yoga with us, but to now be sharing some of her experience with us in this week's installment of the Yoga Living Project. Read more to learn what hooked Erica and how she unfolded from there. We'd like to hear your stories too, email Austin at
New Life Plan
20 years ago, yoga found me. 18 years ago, I took my first yoga teacher training. Today, I am a Certified Yoga Therapist, an E-RYT 500 Instructor, Certified Education Provider, Teacher Trainer, and soon to be certified Kundalini Yoga Instructor. My first teacher training was the greatest gift I had no idea I was being given.
It was the year 2000…the Big One. The Millennium. I was fresh out of college, a new mom, and quite literally lost. As a 20 something with a college degree, a new baby, a loss of my only identity as a soccer player, I had no idea what I was going to do next. My life plan had changed, and I hadn’t had time to find a new one.
While attempting to raise a newborn and find my new life plan, my best friend found yoga in Colorado. She called me and said excitedly that I had to find this yoga class and go. It was the most exhilarating, hardest, and best workout she’d ever done! So, while looking for my new life, I did what any best friend does….I found a class. Turns out, it was the most exhilarating, hardest, and best workout I’d ever done. I was hooked. I had a new life plan. We made our way to the next teacher training in the Fall of 2001. Nine weeks later, I was a shell of the woman that started. 18 years in, after multiple additional trainings and courses, I am only a small reflection of that young woman. Today, I am the most authentic, brightest version of myself and creator of my life.
Yoga, and very specifically, yoga teacher training has given me the opportunity to look deeply into my own eyes, examine the nooks and crannies of my mind, and explore the spaces of my fears and deepest desires. It has given me the opportunity to become curious about myself, begin to quiet the negative self-talk, become confident and proud of my natural talents, become more vulnerable, open myself up to new ideas, new perspectives, find better balance, more love, less stress, lots of laughter, and some of my closest, deepest, and most wonderful relationships. In short, I am a better human.
So, if there’s even the smallest, tiniest internal voice nudging you ever so slightly to dip your toes into the waters of teacher training, let me assure you that your future self is sending you a message and you won’t be disappointed in what it wants you to see, learn, and do.
“The life you have led doesn’t need to be the only life you have.” Anna Quinndlen
Join Erica in the studio for Hot Yoga on Tuesdays 8:30a & Wednesdays 5:45p
