Today we’d like to introduce you to Shawna Bebbling
Hi shawna, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
What is Yoga With Shawna?
The name came after I graduated my yoga teacher training while I was still a writing professor at a few local San Diego colleges. I knew I needed to call myself something so I thought, “Hm…Yoga With Shawna?” If nothing else it is clear and straight forward.” I bought the domain name, and then everything else sort of fell into place. If someone would have told me I would have opened a yoga studio and do much more than teach yoga then, I would have never believed it. Even the whole process of creating my logo still makes me smile. Someone randomly approached me asking if I wanted a logo designed for free because she was experimenting with designing logos. She thought “Maybe this could be another side job for her.” and so I was her guinea pig. I thought “Do I really need a logo? Ah ok.” It is still a trip to me that that logo has been featured internationally a number of times in magazines and at festivals in front of thousands of people. I started a business without realizing I was starting a business: I was so non-attached and just let things come as they were. This is what the mat has taught me, and this is truly why I believe I have had success in my yoga career. I have no business experience. All I have is my heart and the teachings of all the medicines I have learned throughout the years and remembered that lived in my soul. The yoga teaches me how to have a business without being conditioned or stressed by the business world.
Yoga With Shawna started on June 21, 2012. I found reiki, plant medicine, crystals, and many other healing modules just to help myself throughout the years:in my twenties I was very anxious. They put on me on anti-depressants and I was just looking for something more to stop the panic attacks and over-worrying. Yoga worked and I needed to know why. I like school (I was a writing professor) so I started taking trainings to get to the bottom of understanding why yoga worked. I remember feeling like the under-dog in my training because I could barely do the poses. I never thought I was going to teach yoga or that I’d be “good” at it. After I graduated, I began sharing what helped me with others. Little did I know I would quit my job and become a full time healer back then. You can’t fight or hide from your destiny.
I certified hundreds of people in Reiki and Yoga from my living room. I gave hundreds and hundreds of healings for 6 years out of all of the different apartments I lived. My cute, little dogs would sit on my clients as I gave them reiki. I provided donation-based classes for 5 years every day in Mission Beach led by myself and my graduates of my teacher trainings. I taught outside and collaborated with many amazing yoga studios in San Diego and throughout the country. I always believed I didn’t need walls: the studio was in my heart wherever I would go. I could and would teach from anywhere, and so I did. It wasn’t always easy and I have had my share of issues, as all business owners do. But when your heart is compass, you always make it through.
You cannot fight what you are destined to do. I saw San Diego Yoga Festival in a meditation. I started the festival in 2015. It had close to 1000 attendees in its first year, and its success-rate improved 300% in its second year. I knew I outgrew my living room, and so I opened an official yoga studio in July 2018. This studio was simply yet powerfully my heart enclosed in walls. It was a is a donation-based yoga studio offering pay-what-you-want yoga and meditation classes every day, the United State’s first Reiki Clinic offering $25 community style private Reiki sessions a few times a week, and a yoga and energy school offering various certifications in energy healing and yoga along with internships for graduates of the certification programs. It specialized in yoga, meditation, breathing exercises, plant medicine, Reiki, sound healing, crystals, and connecting the mind, body and soul. It is also the home-based of San Diego Yoga Festival.
In 2020 the world did its thing with us all. The yoga festival was planned and ready to happen in May 2020 for its fourth year. We had to cancel the event and close down my studio. I knew I could never stop giving the yoga. I transformed our yoga studio to an online studio and when that didn’t work out, we moved the studio to the parking lot and the park! We kept it going throughout the pandemic. I lead trainings on zoom and offered a class outside donation based on free every day at 9 am. The government did not know how to categorize yoga in level of “important businesses.” We were ranked the last group, right next to nail salons. At this time in my life, I was experiencing my own grief and loss and so I did not have the Jersey girl fight I normally did: Yoga is IMPORTANT especially during this most stressful time of life: we should be Tier 1 or 2 and we should not be forced to be closed for 80% of the year. I kept my head down and just showed up for everyone: we embodied flexibly teaching wherever we were allowed to. The yoga festival went on a break until 2023. It was hard to get people back in th yoga studio: some were still afraid of covid and others just created new habits where yoga was not part of their routine. Many liked the yoga studio outside better than inside. My landlord abruptly ended 5 of the leases in our building: my lease being one of them even though I paid all of my bills. We taught outside once a day while I looked for a new studio space. The city kicked us out of the park from doing yoga. It was hard to find commercial real estate in Imperial Beach and I almost moved my studio: in what felt like the final hour, I found a studio space in Imperial Beach. We kept the classes going outside for one more week as I built out the new space day and night. I would teach classes, lead retreats and then build out the space working 12 hour days. Our new space opened November 2022. Because the world is different and my bills increased 350 percent, I could no longer offer a donation based studio. We keep our prices affordable while serving the community as best as we can like offering free yoga for cancer patients and a few donation based classes weekly. San Diego Yoga Festival happened in 2023. We had about 2500 people. It was nice to see everyone starting to come back again!
Currently, our yoga studio space in Imperial Beach is thriving with over 120 classes a month, sometimes up to 7 classes a day. Education is so important to and my staff and I continue to educate ourselves often. The studio has expanded to now offer trainings in 200-Hour Yoga, 300-Hour Yoga, Breathwork, Aromatherapy Levels 1-4, Reiki + Energy Work Levels 1-4, Yin Yoga, Meditation Training + Sound Healing. I have written over 12 trainings and 19 books. We also have private Saunas + state of the art Sound Viberation Tables that provide Sound Massage healing sessions from 6 am to 10 pm at night. “Yoga With Shawna” is so much more than Yoga and Shawna and it is such a beautiful thing.
Yoga has softened me to acceptance and perseverance and faith. Where once I used to be the warrior stressfully fighting for what I believe in, now, I know the universe knows what I believe in and surrender to let it be delivered as it will: I trust and it happens. It is a beautiful teaching from the mat that has allowed my business to thrive. Believe deeply, work with wisdom and conviction, put people first over money and trust with all your heart.
Through the hard times and the good times and the innocent times and everything in between my heart continued to open more and more. In 2021, I met my now husband. It was love at first sight and we are an amazing team I was a force independently and now I had what I had wished for. I began saving money over the years and was looking to invest to expand Yoga With Shawna at the right time. When I met John he was the missing piece and was able to provide the things I could not fully on my own. We invested and built a 5 acre yoga retreat center 15 minutes outside of Joshua Tree National Park, we call Desert Dimension. We host yoga retreats here (and in Alaska + Mexico) along with allowing others to host their own retreats as well. It is a magical land where transformation happens quickly. In 2023, together we expanded again opening a yoga studio in Oakhurst (about 30 minutes from Yosemite National Park). The yoga studio is not called Yoga With Shawna but Yosemite Yoga + Wellness and is a space for people in the area to give their teachings. I led trainings and classes up there as time permits and we are active in the community.
In 2023, I put the SDYF on “savasana” as I listen to my heart on the next move with this. During this same time period I started my own essential oil company distilling oils or getting pure oils from one of my teachers in India. John helps with the distilling and we recycle local plants that would otherwise be chipped and turn them into essential oil. We collect trees trimmed for fire prevention in Yosemite and turn it into oil (conifers like Pine, Spruce, + Fir). We collect invasive “weeds” in San Diego that tree trimming companies trim to help maintain homes and trails (mainly Eucalyptus) and we collect organic used Christmas Trees in January and turn them into essential oil so they are not just thrown out.
Throughout the years, we have been “Best Of” and featured in various newscasting, magazines, newspapers, and more. I vow to always keep growing. There is a big world out there + I have much to give.
In 2024, Yoga With Shawna was recognized as a school by the military and now provides full scholarships to my trainings for military wives + children looking to expand their education and join the workforce.
What is next? How big can the heart grow? How much can love benefit the world? There are more dreams to be reached to help communities with the power of yoga within me and how it has helped me since 2012. I continue to keep my heart open, surrender and trust. What is next? I cannot wait to see.
I’d be honored to see you in any of these space. My heart is open to you.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
As I just shared in my story, it has not always been easy. I think this is an important thing for all business owners to know. When I first started my business I had no idea what business entailed and I most definitely was ignorant thinking it would be “easy” in the yoga world because it was yoga. When you own a business there are ups and downs, good years and bad years, moments when you feel like the richest and happiest person in the world and moments when you worried about money or what is next…in today’s current age there is then review culture and loud voices of opinions: when you do something right, someone will be upset. I believe running your own business will test you in every way. It is not for everyone. For me, I have such a passion for yoga that these unsmooth moments are worth it. The view from the teacher-side of the mat is one of the most incredible things I have ever seen: people who want to work on themselves.
Sometimes running a business is like “putting out fires.” There is a lot to manage. But if you are heart centered and trust, use wisdom and keep learning, it is always ok.
I just started a small business group: Goddesses in Business to help bring people together to discuss these problems because I feel like sometimes business owners think they are the only one going through all of this…
and it is not true!
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I think the best thing about me is that I am a reliable and honest….
Crazy anxious, out of my mind, I started taking anti-depressants to control the fear. Frazzled knowing there had to be something more, I googled, “yoga” on the internet to find an 85 year old yogi from India offering classes two blocks from my home.Being there was not much holistic health in NJ at that time, and the only yoga I knew of as offered once at a week at a gym, I knew this experience was part of my destiny.
Shanti (that is his name, which also translates to the word “Peace”) and I sat in his apartment week after week. Him dressed in all white, radiating a sense of peace my so young and scared mind couldn’t even comprehend. It made me feel uncomfortable how at peace with the world he was. I thought, “This has got to be bull shit. I bet he screams in a pillow every night. No one is this zen.”
I smile at the person I was then close to a decade ago. We would “Om” and chant as he played his harmonium (which back then I referred to as a funny-looking- accordion-want-to-be). He told me stories of Atman and Brahman. He gave me a tongue scraper. We would do various breathing exercises. I remember thinking, “This shit is weird, but it’s kind of working.”
One day, I felt strong. My heart was growing bigger than the anxious thoughts in my head. I asked Shanti when we were going to do yoga. He asked me what I meant, and then I replied with deepest ignorance: “You know, when are we going to do a downward dog?” He smiled in pureness and told me we were doing yoga. He warned me to not go to the gym and take yoga there. Naturally, I didn’t listen and I enrolled in a class the next day. Immediately I realized he was right as I was sweating and judging myself trying to keep up with everyone around me. There was no mind-body connection: all there was was ego and stress. I understood, at that moment, that Shanti was heaven sent showing me the rawness of this medicine not what society has created to sell or market for a “perfect body” in expensive stretch pants.
Shanti wrote 8 books on yoga philosophy. I read them all cover to cover. Most went over my head. Some resonated deeply in my heart. I still reference these books today as a teacher. Some, still, go over my head. More resonate deeply with my heart. I consider my time with Shanti in New Jersey my first yoga teacher training. I sat with him and the yoga many times throughout the months. I did it solely to try to take back my life as I had lost it to anxiety, over-worrying, over-working and hypochondriac behavior. The yoga, it reminded me of all that I am: a human who’s birthright is to feel peace and live in love.
The yoga made me so strong I decided to start listening to myself: I trusted a gut feeling and moved to San Diego without a serious job lead or a single friend in the city. I left everyone and everything I ever loved because my soul felt it was unexplainably right. Looking back today, I know it was the yoga at pulled me here. As I shifted coasts, I connected deeper with my practice. Classes in California were different than my time with Shanti, but the yoga will provide its medicine regardless of how it is delivered.
I took a yoga teacher training out of curiosity. At the time, I was a writing professor at a few local colleges: I loved this job and had been doing it for years. I wasn’t looking for a career change, but I remember a few times taking a yoga class and thinking “I suck at yoga: how could I be a yoga teacher?” I then remember thinking “Why would you ever think that thought, Shawna? You’re not going to be a yoga teacher.” It’s funny how the subconscious mind already new my destiny, but my conscious mind was so full of judgement and confusion.
I looked at my then, barely existing, bank account. I had just enough money to enroll in a teacher training. I remember waking up one morning knowing I had to enroll, so I emptied my account At this time, I also believed I wasn’t “good” at yoga: I couldn’t do any of the hard poses and honestly, I often felt like I was going to faint when I would take a sweaty, fast-paced class. I was embarrassed that I signed up for a yoga teacher training because I didn’t think I was good enough: I remember avoiding my teacher because I didn’t want to admit to her that I was going to actually do this. Stronger than all of this ego-created-illusion, though, was my heart: it knew that yoga saved my life and I wanted to know how. I knew I needed to take this training to understand how yoga worked and where it came from. I never intended to be a yoga teacher. In fact, I remember being the “under dog” in my yoga teacher training. Do you know I actually showed up to the first class with a pilates mat instead of a yoga mat?
You can trust that what you are destined to do, where you are destined to be and who you are destined to love will fall together without any permission from you. I was immediately given a job when I graduated my teacher training because a studio needed someone to teach desperately. I remember telling all the other people in my training to do it. No one wanted it, and so I accepted. Months later I was given the opportunity to build a yoga studio within a music shop. A year later, the universe provided me my own yoga business. Now, I have led thousands of classes, certified hundreds of people, have a book published in India and 12 trainings with 19 manuals, and have created various yoga businesses provided powerfully healing experiences in many ways.
It is an honor to be a yoga teacher, Reiki practitioner, Sound Pracitcioner, Breathwork facilitator, aromatherapist, distiller, teacher, leader, writer, business owner and so much more. Yoga opened the door to the world of holistic health and it is an amazing place to be. It is an honor to help people remember who they really are. It is a privilege, and I am forever grateful for this practice and those who have helped pass it on to stood the test of time to exist in my current world.
Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
Stick around….I think a lot of people take a risk to start a business and then they quit right before it gets good. The first couple years can be hard. I worked another job while running my own business for 2 years and I only made $6000 my first year in Yoga With Shawna. As the business gets older, it gets easier, so stick with it. You are building a name for yourself and it will take time but it will pay off: I promise, even in its darkest hours.
Yosemite Yoga and Wellness is about 1 years old and Desert Dimension is about 3 years old. I joke with people that I have two toddlers: these businesses need a lot of my attention. They cost a lot and are still growing. Yoga With Shawna is over 13 years old…this “teenager” still needs my love, but is pretty independent and is thriving even when “mom” is not around.
Stick with it. Stick with it. Stick with it. Don’t give up.
Pricing:
- $22 a yoga class
- $111 monthly membership
- $40 for private sauna or sound vibration sessions
- $25 for community reiki
- flexible payment plans for trainings + retreats
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.yogawithshawna.com
- Instagram: @yogawithshawna
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yogawithshawna
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@yogawithshawna7066
