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Four
years ago Lauren Fawcett couldn't sit down or even turn a doorknob
without enduring excruciating pain. Now she is a certified instructor
of a rigorous, aerobic style of yoga at a studio she opened in August
of 2000.
"God
closed a door, truly He did," she said. "And He opened a window."
The door that slammed shut on her life was being diagnosed with
a severely debilitating case of rheumatoid arthritis. The window
that opened before her showed her the path to reclaiming her health…and
finding her dream job.
In
1997, the disease was at its most painful, and for all their efforts,
Fawcett's doctors could do little to put it into remission. She
was taking heavy doses of several medications, all of which did
little to alleviate her aching. Before long, she turned to acupuncture,
massage therapy, and "everything you can imagine in addition to
the medication" to stave off the pain. She even tried several different
kinds of yoga before stumbling on a method called Bikram. It was
a discovery that would change her life.
Not
your grandmother's yoga
After studying Bikram yoga for two years with an instructor in her
native Boston, Fawcett jetted off to Beverly Hills for an intensive
nine-week instructor training course. She opened her studio, YogaDuzit,
keeping her day job at the family oil business in the interim to
make ends meet.
"You're
working when everybody else is playing - nights and weekends," she
said. "The big time is when people get out of work." Most nights
she doesn't leave the studio until nearly 10 p.m., only to return
at 8:15 the next morning. "It's the toughest job I'll ever love,"
she said, almost as if she were a volunteer for a spiritual version
of the Peace Corps.
There
is an array of different yoga methods out there, with names like
Ananda, Jivamukti, and Kundalini - from the sedentary and introspective
to the strenuous, there's a style for everybody. "The thing
is that people say it's a fad," complained Fawcett. "It's
not a fad, it's a 5,000-year-old practice. It works."
But
Bikram yoga is not your grandmother's yoga. Before every 90-minute
workout, Fawcett, 30, cranks the thermostat in her studio up to
104 sweltering degrees to limber up the body's connective tissues
and help it sweat out toxins. "From the minute you walk in that
door, it's pretty much hard work," she said.
Fawcett
charges $10 per class and offers private lessons for $75. And since
she only opened her doors six months ago, she wasn't sure how much
she would make as a full-time instructor. "I estimate that the full-time
yoga teacher teaches 14 classes a week," she said. "That instructor
will earn about $29,000 a year. A fair range would be $30,000 to
$40,000."
Four
careers in one
It's clear that Fawcett would be teaching at YogaDuzit for free
if she had to, if only to share her life-saving experience with
others. "What I'm doing for myself, and now what I'm doing for so
many people, is incredible. It's incredible."
Make
no mistake, though, yoga's no panacea, and she still must take a
daily cocktail of medications to help keep her life pain-free.
The
15 to 30 people she leads through any given class are a mix of men
and women, fit and fat, young and old. Fawcett said at any session
she'll have a buff triathlete, someone with a back injury, a completely
inflexible neophyte, and an overweight person in her studio. "I
should charge you to be a therapist, a nutritionist, a masseuse,
and a liposuctionist," she joked, laughing.
No
longer interested in the family business and suffering unexpectedly
from arthritis nearly four years ago, Fawcett would be the first
to admit that she never imagined she'd find such a physically and
spiritually rewarding career path.
So,
if you feel the need for a healthy and potentially lifesaving job
of your own, grab a towel and a yoga mat. It's never too late to
learn your locust pose, tighten up your toe stand…and dream on!
Do
it for you
For more information about YogaDuzit or Bikram yoga, check
out http://www.yogaduzit.com.
-
Brian Braiker, Salary.com Contributor
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