chuck crosby

Coming out of retirement 5 years ago at the age of 44, I decided to embark on my third career, this time as an ashtanga vinyasa yoga instructor. This was quite a change from my first two careers; a plumbing & heating supply salesman and then a house husband/stay at home dad. I decided it was time to find something to do that I had a passion for, other than golf. I had been doing yoga out of a book fairly regularly for the previous 5 years but it was not a cardiovascular workout in any way. It kept me more flexible than my friends (that’s not saying much) and it helped with my golf swing but I still needed to run and lift weights to get a full body workout. This of course was very time consuming so I went in search of something that could give me everything in one routine. I also needed something that would take me inside myself and help me find calm and focus. After considering the different martial arts, I decided to stick with some type of yoga since I felt like I knew the basics. One afternoon, I happened on a schedule from a yoga studio offering ashtanga yoga. At that time I had never heard of ashtanga yoga so I called and asked a few questions. Two days later, I took my first class and I knew immediately I had found what I was looking for. No perfect clothes, no perfect pose, just me and my mat. The physical workout was what I was looking for but the euphoria that stayed with me all through the next day was an unexpected benefit. I was hooked. Two months later I enrolled in the teacher-training workshop and have never looked back. As my practice deepened, so did my spirituality and for that I am very thankful. Now I am a certified ashtanga vinyasa yoga instructor with over 350 hours of training and have been teaching for over 4 years. The benefits of yoga can be many but at a minimum it opens the heart, strengthens the mind and body and most amazingly (and this isn’t mentioned often enough), helps remove much of the gray area between what is right and wrong for you in regards to who and what you want to be.