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Part 1: The Dream

by | Apr 1, 2015 | News + Events

Welcome to the Ironwood Yoga studios website.

We are so excited you are here and equally excited to bring Ironwood Yoga studios to life.  When I say “we” I mean myself, Leah Bosworth and my, (I like to call him) “domestic man partner” Scott Mills, because I cannot think of anything that works better.

Scott & Leah

We have been together for going on 8 years now!  Whaaat! yes, just like Kurt and Goldie.  Can you see the resemblance?  :D  We own a house in North Central Phoenix with our two adorable and deeply loved dogs Jake and Albert.  [insert adorable pix of dogs here].  :)

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It has been a dream of ours for a long time to create a life and a business that would feel in alignment with our purpose in life: to teach, create and build a happy community.

We just weren’t sure how to make it happen.  We have a pretty great life together, but we both felt like we were just slogging away, burnt out on our jobs and feeling like making it to the “finish line” of life was going to be an awful depressing grind if we didn’t finally say “YES” to our souls that were screaming at us literally through physical pain in our body.  “Stop the madness, trust the universe and do what you love. Step into your soul and promise not to let you fall.”  But we were stuck.

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About a year (or so) ago, my dear friend Nathalie who had been coming to my yoga classes in Scottsdale for 4 years came to me and said, “my dad just bought a new building for his business Organic Living and it has a perfect space for a yoga studio. (hint hint wink wink)”

I went over to see the space and instantly fell in love with it.  (I really did and I hope you do to)  It was a raw warehouse with high ceilings, skylights and so much potential.  At that moment, I knew I would have a yoga studio there. But then life got crazy.  My birth father passed away and that sent me down a long rabbit hole of introspection and family drama.  My dream got pushed to the back burner as I sifted thru a myriad of emotions.  But the spark of my dream stayed tucked deep in my heart. Thru a strange twist of events I ended up traveling my ass off for the next year. Only one of these trips was planned, but the rest just kept coming. I was sure I was running from something, but now in retrospect, I think I was running to something.  From March – September I went home to New York to meet with my meditation teacher, traveled to Bali to do ecstatic dance, went yachting in the Baja peninsula where I swam with seals, hiked near the Grand Tetons and sailed to Catalina Island.

 

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You would think that all of those grand fantastic trips would have inspired me to make the change I was hoping for.  But they didn’t.

As much as I enjoyed myself in all of those exotic places, when I came home, I felt empty, scared and hopeless.

But then one more trip came up and I thought oh my gosh I can’t go to one more place.

I’ve got to stay home and “figure my life out”.

But it was a small little quiet trip to Eugene, Oregon to see my best friend from high school.  She had two kids age 4 & 6 that I had never met and for some reason, I just had to go.  I made her take me to a yoga class.  (she’s a pilaties girl). She said, “okay, I have a friend that just opened a yoga studio, we’ll go there”.  We went to this sweet & simple, but beautifully modern studio with really great energy and a lovely community.

It must have been somewhere in the middle of my down dog that a little voice inside me said, “you can do this”.  Maybe it was in pigeon, who knows.  :) But something shifted inside me that day and this time, I decided to allow it.

I was introduced to Heather, the owner, of the studio, we became fast friends.  It is amazing to me the power of one person.  Because Heather, decided step into her soul, it has had a ripple effect.  I came home from Eugene, Oregon with a new conviction.  I didn’t know how it was going to happen, but that I was going to open that yoga studio no matter what…and it had a ripple effect. Because I was so confident with nothing more than I had had before, Scott took the plunge with me to realize his dream as well.  Nothing had changed externally. What changed was that my heart opened up and I had the courage to allow it to remain open.  I think we have these opportunities all the time but we constantly keep shutting them down.

 

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So now it is my hope that by bringing Ironwood to life, my ripple effect will move through you and will create a little more space in your heart so when that little voice whispers to you “you can do this” there will be room for you to say “yes” and step in to your soul.  Then who knows what will happen.  One day, you may unknowingly unlock a girls dream that’s tucked way down deep in her heart and a whole new world will be born.

 

 

2 Comments

  1. Kari Martin

    Awesome Leah!!!! Way to go! xo

    • Leah Bosworth

      Thanks babe!
      xo

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