Non-Attachment in Yoga and Business

It all began when Sarah pinched her sciatic nerve and was recovering from a back injury. She wanted to find a yoga studio where she could focus on rebuilding her core strength.?

She assumed that since there were tons of studios in NYC, it would be easy to find one for her. Turns out, it wasn’t so easy. Many of the studios she went to would have some type of barrier to entry. They would have prerequisites such as, how many classes have you taken? What level have you done? Have you filled out this form? Have you taken a class here before? Do you have a membership??

All of this felt overwhelming for someone who really wanted to engage with the yoga practice but was finding a hard time getting into it. Not to mention the wide range of classes that were offered at so many studios. For her, a relative novice, she didn't know the difference between Ashtanga, Kundalini, Yin, Hatha, Vinyasa, and the others. She didn’t quite know what was going on or what she needed. She ended up trying a ton of different classes, and out of this frustration, Y7 was born.?

Y7 Studio is Sarah’s line of yoga studios that now has 6 boutique locations across New York City and Los Angeles. She received over $5 million in investment and has been recognized as one of the Inc. 5000 Fastest-Growing Private Companies. Sarah has been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, Vogue, Medium, Refinery 29, NY Mag, Harpers Bazaar, the Women in Business Summit, and much more!?

Y7 combines all of Sarah’s favorite elements of yoga, with one type of class, so clients can really count on the consistency. Instructors have the freedom to create their own sequences and choose their own playlists, but they all have a similar framework of coherance. Sarah built the type of studio that she herself was in search of, and she knew to her core that others were in search of this type of experience too. At Y7, you can expect to move through traditional yoga poses in a non-traditional atmosphere: flowing to hip-hop beats by candlelight with no mirrors, allowing yogis to have an inward experience.?

When Sarah was initially envisioning what this yoga experience would look like, she had lots of different ideas. However, the motto that she lived by was to start somewhere. As a result, Y7 started as a weekend pop-up and grew rapidly from there. She is an advocate for letting go of the idea that when you put something out into the world it’s going to be perfect on the first try. She says don’t ever expect that (it's nice when it happens, but oh so rare).

This leads to the primary mindset shift that helped Sarah to succeed:?Stay flexible and detached from the outcome.?

One of the greatest lessons Sarah feels she got from yoga is: nonattachment (or Aparigraha). In yoga, you can’t be attached to how you look in a pose or if you are doing it perfectly. It does you no good to worry about not being flexible enough. It’s best to simply let go and flow. Practice makes perfect, and with repetition, you gradually get a little bit better each time you try. Meanwhile, along the way, as you are building up to the full expression of the pose, you adapt and modify.?

For Sarah, this analogy carried over to business. In the early days, she had to make numerous changes along the way from what she initially thought would work. She had to change the length of their classes, the cadence, the flow, the timing, and constantly adapt to the customer's needs and lifestyles. She would throw new ideas out there, and if they worked, great, and if they didn’t, that was okay too. She started to get comfortable with the fact that change was inevitable and sometimes she would have to say goodbye to the rigidity of her business plan.?

Sarah reminds us that if you’re too attached to the outcome, when you try something new and think it’s going to work, and then it doesn't, you perceive it as a failure. When instead, you should consider thinking of it as data, evidence, and feedback. Realize that it is information that you previously didn’t have, and now you can adapt and move forward differently.?

Adaptation was something Sarah grew very familiar with during the pandemic. Her business, like the entire fitness industry, was hit very hard by COVID. Like so many businesses, she had to pivot very quickly to an online platform.

Fast forward to today and she survived COVID and came out stronger than ever. She did this by rethinking her teams at the studios, consolidating locations, adding an online retail store with yoga gear, and adding a digital component that's not competing with their in-person concept.??

Check out Y7 locations and experience the sweat-dripping beat bumping candlelit flow yourself: https://www.y7-studio.com/