Stela Balaban

I discovered yoga at age 24 when I came across a yoga DVD in a friend’s basement. That was my very first yoga class and it was love at first sight. Since then, yoga has changed my life in unimaginable ways and it has become an essential part of my every day existence. In the beginning, yoga was a practice that helped me get physically stronger, more flexible, more grounded and better balanced. Later, it gave me the confidence I needed to try things that I never thought I would be capable.  Slowly, my yoga practice has started to spill “off the mat” and it became a path to self-acceptance, love, compassion and truth.

It’s hard to explain how a simple tree pose can bring you peace or how five minutes of conscious breathing can help you let go of worries. I surely don’t know how or why it works. But it does. It works for me and it works for my students. It works for beginners who have no yoga experience and it works for yogis who have been practicing for decades. It works for athletes and people with injuries, for children and for elders. Yoga offers something for everyone, as long as they open their mind and hearts to listen to what their own bodies are telling them.

My love for yoga inspired me to start teaching. I completed my 200 hour yoga teacher training in 2011 at the White Lotus Foundation in Santa Barbara, CA. Shortly afterwards I started teaching part-time at the Edgewood Community Center in North Canton, OH. In the beginning of 2013, I have also started teaching a weekly class for Diebold employees. My classes are rooted in Hatha and Vinyasa yoga, with a heavy emphasis on alignment. Furthermore, I am a big advocate of modifications that can accommodate different levels of difficulty, injuries and even emotional barriers. My students often tell me that my classes are challenging followed by how great they feel at the end of class. I also joke around a lot during class and I like to keep the atmosphere very light. It’s only yoga, right?!

One of the many reasons I love teaching is because I see how it empowers my students to improve the quality of their life, one stretch at a time. Yoga is not something done to you, rather it’s something that you do yourself. Yoga takes work. Yoga takes awareness for each and every single breath. For this reason, at the end class, all that goodness that my students feel comes from the effort that they have put in themselves. While it brings me joy to hear about my students’ positive experiences, I see my role just as just a guide offering suggestions. In the end, you get out only what you put in.

Even though teaching has become a large part of my practice, I continue to be yoga student. I often take classes in different yoga traditions and attend workshops on different topics because I am interested in always expanding my knowledge and further growing my yoga practice. I have taken classes many styles including: Vinyasa, Ashtanga, Bikram, Anusara, Chrysalis, Kundalini, Yin and hot yoga.  I treasure the knowledge and love received from all my yoga teachers I have met along the way. Some of the more recognizable names include: Tracy and Ganga White, Katherine Budig, Tiffany Cruikshank, Kent Bond and Theresa Murphy. The less recognizable names include all my students and all the yogis next to whom I have practiced, sweated, breathed and smiled.

Namaste!