Standing on My Own Rug

There are moments in life that divide everything into before and after. Some are dramatic. Others arrive quietly, carrying their meaning disguised as ordinary events.

One morning in the late 1980s, I drove to work as I always had. I loved my job. I had become one of the pioneers in group fitness, traveling to California to study with the leaders in the field. I had discovered that the high-impact aerobics everyone was teaching didn't feel right in my own recently pregnant body. Every jump felt jarring.

I remember thinking, There has to be a better way. So, I stopped jumping. I taught the choreography, but with one foot always connected to the earth. Later I learned there was already a name for it: low-impact aerobics.

I immersed myself in it, brought it back to the club, and watched the program grow beyond anything I imagined. I thought I had found my future. Then one morning I arrived at work and found the doors locked. A handwritten sign simply read: Closed Permanently. No warning. No conversation. Just...gone.

I remember standing there staring at the sign, feeling as though the ground beneath me had disappeared. The irony wasn't lost on me. I had spent years helping people feel grounded in their bodies. Now I had no ground beneath my own feet.

When I got home, I did what I often do when words aren't enough. I painted. Not with an idea. Not with an intention. Just brush after brush until something appeared. When I stepped back, I saw what I had painted. A rug.  Just...a rug.

And in that instant, I understood something that no amount of thinking could have shown me. I needed to build a life where the rug could never again be pulled out from under me. I needed to own the rug I stood on.

This painting hangs in my yoga room today. People often ask what it means. To me, it marks the moment I stopped waiting for someone else to create the foundation beneath my feet. It was the beginning of becoming an entrepreneur. Although I didn't know it then... It was also the beginning of what would eventually be The Nest…a place where every teacher would “own their rug”.

#ownyouryoga #ownyourrug