Benefits of Baptiste Yoga

Interview with Becky Verner, Hikyoga Instructor in Cleveland and Cleveland Yoga Instructor

When you change your focus from limitations to boundless possibilities, from doubt and fear to love and confidence, you open your world in entirely new ways. You stop worrying about fixing what's wrong with you and start living from all that's right within you.”

― Baron Baptiste, Journey Into Power

Becky Verner is a Baptiste wealth of knowledge. A spark of bright, happy light. A supportive pillar to the yoga community and beyond. A fresh, intuitive addition to the Cleveland Yoga family. Those who have taken a Becky Verner class are always quick to return. And those who haven’t need to!

Read on to learn more about this Cleveland Yoga staple and Cleveland yoga guru! Thank you to Cleveland Yoga for sponsoring the Cleveland Ohio Yoga Festival!

Why Baptiste Yoga?

I’ve studied, practiced and taught other styles of yoga, and Baptiste yoga is my favorite. I love Baptiste Yoga because it is such a powerful practice! The Baptiste sequence, Journey Into Power, will stretch, strengthen and tone your body; but it’s more than that -- we are up to something bigger! Baptiste Yoga encourages us to create the best versions of ourselves through asana (yoga poses), meditation and inquiry (self-study). I’ve pushed myself in all three of those areas, and dug under some layers that made me feel uncomfortable. But they were worth it, and made me who I am today. Baptiste Yoga gives me tools to live life more powerfully, like Baron says in the quote above, “stop fixing what’s wrong with you and start living from all that’s right within you.”

Where are you from?

I grew up on the east side of Cleveland, in Richmond Heights, and now I live in Tremont. My family consists of my dad, stepmom, older sister, brother-in-law and 2-year-old niece.

How do you use yoga in your day-to-day?

My mom died of a sudden heart attack when I was 10. Grieving the death of my mom has been a big part of my life in many ways. I have volunteered as a children’s grief support group facilitator for the last three years with Joel’s Place for Children in Bay VIllage. I recently began working for the non-profit to strengthen and grow our mission to help grieving children and families. I lead grief-focused gentle yoga and meditation events called Yoga to Remember.

What is Cleveland Yoga to you?

Cleveland Yoga means community and consistency to me. I feel so powerful finding freedom to play within the structure of Journey Into Power. Poses that used to make me feel defeated now feel like an opportunity to explore my body’s capabilities and edges. “Not a power over others, a power from within,” Baron says. To me, a powerful practice doesn’t mean you land every advanced variation, it’s about the conversation in your mind and the expression of that through your body, grounded by your breath.

I am currently enrolled in an additional 300-hour advanced yoga teacher training led by Tami Schneider at Cleveland Yoga. I plan to use this training to strengthen my skills and confidence as both a teacher and student of yoga, and as a being of power off the mat, too.