From Corporate Burnout to Yoga Teacher

Ten years in investment banking. Fourteen-hour days. Three failed relationships. Two anxiety disorders. One complete breakdown.

When my therapist suggested yoga, I laughed. Yoga was for flexible women in expensive leggings, not for guys like me. But I was desperate enough to try anything, and somehow that desperation led me to booking a teacher training in Nepal. I told everyone I was "taking a sabbatical to travel." I was really running for my life.

I arrived in Pokhara unable to touch my toes, unable to sit still for five minutes, unable to remember the last time I'd felt calm. The four weeks ahead seemed impossible.

The instructors didn't coddle me. When I couldn't do poses, they gave modifications. When my mind raced during meditation, they said "good, you noticed - now return to breath." When I wanted to quit after week one, they said "everyone feels this. Keep going."

I came skeptical and exhausted. I left with purpose. The teachers saw something in me I couldn't see in myself. They weren't just teaching poses; they were teaching a way of being that I hadn't known existed.

The transformation wasn't dramatic or sudden. It was daily practice, daily philosophy, daily sitting with discomfort until it became... not comfortable exactly, but manageable. Then peaceful. Then, eventually, something I looked forward to.

I teach yoga now. Part-time, at a studio in Denver, while I figure out what's next. Some of my former colleagues think I've lost my mind. But for the first time in my adult life, I wake up without dread. That's not nothing. That's everything.

If corporate life is breaking you like it broke me, consider that there's another way. Nepal showed me that way. The mountains don't care about your portfolio returns or your quarterly targets. They just stand there, ancient and peaceful, reminding you what actually matters.