Life ... Work ... Balance

Seven years ago, licensed clinical social worker Jodie Tingle-Willis reluctantly went to a yoga class with her husband, fellow social worker Shannon Willis. “I thought it was a little out there,” she says of the class. “He didn’t like it, but I fell in love. I knew it was what I needed to take care of myself.”

 

The love continued to blossom. When Tingle-Willis took some training to improve her yoga practice, she saw potential in doing a different kind of social work by sharing her joy with others. She received her 200-hour Registered Yoga Teacher certification through the international professional body Yoga Alliance, and last year, in an astounding career change, left her position as director of residential services at Home of the Innocents to teach full-time. Today, as proprietor of Supreme Peace Yoga, she teaches 13 classes a week at her home studio in the Beechmont neighborhood and at Deer Park Baptist Church in the Highlands.

 

If this sounds like a dramatic change, no one is more surprised than Tingle-Willis herself, who regularly encounters those skeptical of the yoga lifestyle. “I guess, in some respects, I used to be one of those people too,” she says, but adds that there’s no need for fear; Supreme Peace’s classes truly are accessible to would-be practitioners of all ages and abilities, and there is no maximum age or minimum fitness level. “I’ve taught some people well into their 70s, even early 80s,” Tingle-Willis says. 

 

Her classes range from the strengthening Yin yoga, where students hold poses for up to five minutes, to restorative yoga and gentle yoga for cautious beginners or those living with chronic pain. Additionally, she says, “I teach Hatha (what people usually think of when they think of yoga poses) and also Vinyasa, which is a form of Hatha, where, instead of holding the poses for several breaths, each pose is connected with the breath and you flow through the practice.” 

 

And practice does make perfect. “Anybody who can breathe can do yoga,” she says. “If you can do the physical postures, that’s great. It’s good to stretch. But it’s important to do the breathing, because that’s where we get a sense of peace and calm. Even if I can’t touch my knees, it’s honoring what I can do and enjoying that experience and living in the moment rather than thinking about having the TV on and the computer on at the same time and giving your kids direction in the other room.”

 

This focus has done more than help Tingle-Willis’ flexibility; it’s helped her stretch her mind and make other subtle health changes as well. “I think I’m a much more calm and peaceful person,” she says. “Working in social services can be a pretty stressful job, and it’s definitely an important way to take care of yourself. Now I make more healthy choices for myself – not just in eating and exercise, but I think in the way I deal with people. Yoga is an eight-limbed path, and the physical postures are only one of them.”

 

After an hour of near-constant Vinyasa movement, Tingle-Willis ends each class with students in savasana – the disturbingly named “corpse pose.” But unlike a death, its practitioners rise rejuvenated. She ends with the benediction, “The highest in me honors and sees the highest in you,” a common translation of the traditional Indian greeting “Namaste.” 

 

“Wherever you are is where you’re supposed to be,” Tingle-Willis says of yoga practice, but it could also apply to what happens as each person in her class leaves and goes out into the world. “It’s about focusing on one thing and enjoying it and doing it well. It’s honoring and experiencing your life.”

 

Jodie Tingle-Willis teaches in the Highlands and Beechmont neighborhoods. For an up-to-date schedule, including information on specific styles, individualized classes and course packages, visit www.supreme-peace-yoga.com or Supreme Peace Yoga on Facebook.