From Crypto Accountant to Yoga Teacher in 200 Hours

I’ve been almost exclusively focused on work since I graduated from UF as a newly-formed adult in May 2020. From Honeywell to Figment to starting Hash Basis, my goals were always career-oriented and geared towards climbing the next rung on some kind of life ladder. The thrill of crypto accounting, US GAAP and tax returns was intoxicating. I’m the kind of human who savors learning and eats up knowledge like it’s my last morsel. I’m happy to spend late nights reading about Swiss accounting regulations and hours on the phone with Intuit support agents to figure out a client problem. None of that has changed, but over the past quarter, my internal gaze has shifted slightly away from spreadsheets and onto the larger puzzle of being alive.

I have my yoga teacher training course to thank for that. 😌 From April - June, I was a student at Folk SF’s yoga school and soaked up yoga philosophies, complex asana and how to actually cue people to move their bodies through space & time. The experience shook me out of my habits and calmed my mind in unexpected ways. I became more reflective and less reactive; I started pondering death more often. I felt like I had crawled out of my obsessive, tiny cave into an open, sunlit world. It’s so easy to be tunnel visioned here in San Francisco and think careers are the end-all, be-all.

Now that I’m nearing the end of yoga school, I wanted to reflect on the last three months and write about what I’ve gleaned. I’m definitely not an enlightened yogini (not even close), but I feel wiser and more balanced than before. 🧘

Patañjali’s Yoga Sutras

My favorite lesson of the training was a discussion of the Yoga Sutras by Patañjali. Compiled somewhere between the 2nd century BCE and 5th century CE, the Sutras outline the eight limbs of yoga and how to achieve samadhi or pure awareness. The Yoga Sutras combine brevity with mind-bending wisdom and are a guide on how to live a healthy, free life. I was astounded on multiple levels:

• It turns out yoga isn’t just the asana (poses) we practice today - it’s a system that includes breathwork, meditation, kindness towards others and self-study. Only through practicing all eight limbs can one achieve freedom from citta vritti or the ceaseless patterns of consciousness. For reference, the eight limbs (called Ashtanga) are:

  • Yamas - how one relates to the outside world
  • Niyamas - how one relates to the self
  • Asana - physical postures
  • Pranayama - breathwork
  • Pratyahara - withdrawal of the senses (think savasana)
  • Dharana - concentration on a single point
  • Dhyana - sustained concentration
  • Samadhi - integration/absorption → pure awareness is reflected back to itself

• I was drawn to the yamas and niyamas because they are guides on how to live a moral and happy life. Both of those limbs have “sub-limbs” that include nonviolence, telling the truth, being healthy & clean, working hard, etc. They’re a blueprint similar to the ten commandments, and I was awestruck because I realized I could raise my children according to the Yoga Sutras. 🤯 It’s a comprehensive program for becoming a thoughtful and kind person - and there’s no religious dogma involved.

• According to the Sutras, there’s a difference between consciousness (i.e. the thoughts we conjure and our senses) and pure awareness. We often can’t recognize or access pure awareness because our consciousness is getting in the way, always reacting and creating samskaras (negative imprints). Mickey Singer, a guru in Gainesville that I used to visit, called consciousness the “annoying roommate” that is spamming our brains with emotions. It’s not logical. It’s not sane.

  Pure awareness, on the other hand, observes the consciousness but is separate from it. I was drawn to this concept because for the last year, I’ve wanted to see the world for what it really is, to know reality in all of its glory or un-glory. My mind is always fogged with tasks or emotional reactions. I wanted to shake myself and shout, Wait! What’s actually happening here? It turns out that ancient Indian yogis beat me to it - Patañjali says that only through achieving samadhi and kaivalya (freedom) can we finally be at ease. Sutra 1.41 says it best,

  As the patterning of consciousness subsides, a transparent way of seeing, called coalescence, saturates consciousness; like a jewel, it reflects equally whatever lies before it - whether subject, object or act of perceiving.

• Book 3 of the Sutras covers the special powers that arise after achieving samadhi. Everything from clairvoyance to mind-reading and walking on water can happen. I have a lifetime of yoga and meditation ahead of me to get that level, but one can hope. 🤷

I fell in love with the Sutras because it was the first text that cracked some of the deeper, existential questions that have been swirling in me for a while. It’s ancient but it’s also relatable and implementable - it’s essentially a self-help book that’s lasted millenia. Some of my other favorite sutras include:

2.1 Yogic action has three components - discipline, self-study and orientation towards the ideal of pure awareness.

2.3 The causes of suffering are not seeing things as they are, the sense of “I”, attachment, aversion and clinging to life.

3.27 Focusing with perfect discipline on the sun yields insight about the universe.

3.43 By focusing with perfect discipline on the body’s relationship to the ether and developing coalesced contemplation on the lightness of cotton, one can travel through space.

Human Anatomy & Ayurveda

I was blasted back to high school once again, learning the different bones of the body and the distinction between tendons and ligaments. We had an incredible textbook, Yoga Anatomy, that highlighted the various muscles and joints that are involved in yoga poses. The introductory chapters reviewed the biggest systems in the body - muscular, nervous, spinal, and respiratory (particularly how the breath works). I have a newfound appreciation for the spine and its “sections” (cervical, thoracic and lumbar) that allow us to bend and sway. I was familiarized with words like “lordotic” (inward curve in the neck and low back) and “kyphotic” (outward curve in the mid-back). I became hyper aware of the scoop of air between my low back and the floor when in savasana, and how my body is naturally filled with curves and crevices.

We also had a lesson on Ayurveda, an ancient system of Indian medicine. We only scratched the surface (it’s hard to distill thousands of years of knowledge into a three-hour lecture), but my curiosity was piqued. The Ayurvedic system is composed of the five elements: space, earth, fire, water and air. Each person can also be characterized by their dosha (body type/disposition) that corresponds to those elements. The three main doshas are:

• Vata Dosha (wind)
  • Describes tall, thin or petite people (typically bony with cold extremities)
  • Vata personalities are quick to forget, fast-paced, excitable and talkative
  • Tend to have anxiety
• Pitta Dosha (fire)
  • Individuals with a medium build; skin burns easily and is prone to sweating, hives, etc
  • Sharp personality, confident, competitive and good public speakers
• Kapha Dosha (water)
  • Sturdy and strong, can tend towards being overweight; soft features
  • Easygoing and slow-paced, calm and a rock to those they’re around

Incredibly, our instructor for the lesson (Dr. Sadeghi) was able to diagnose our dispositions by taking our pulse. She immediately identified me as a vata/pitta combination and detected the anxiety and strain I often hold in my chest. Most people are a mix of the doshas, and it’s rare to find someone who is 100% dominant in one category. Our personalities and traits are fluid, shaped by our circumstances and our genetics - we’re eternally changing.

Verbal Intentionality & the Art of Teaching Yoga

I quickly learned that teaching yoga isn’t an easy feat. Looking back, I foolishly approached this program with curiosity but also a dose of arrogance - I secretly thought how hard can it be to teach yoga? I was humbled on the first day of teaching as I fumbled my words and felt the pressure of “performing” for the students. Teaching yoga isn’t the same as public speaking or hosting crypto accounting webinars. Those performances are carefully rehearsed but also conversational - a normal amount of filler words is okay because it humanizes me. I also don’t have to be pithy; I can prattle on about block explorers or the R&D tax credit because it’s my area of expertise.

With yoga, the instructor is telling students how to place their limbs in space and focus their mind. It’s a delicate task that has a degree of intimacy and trust involved. The goal is to use short sentences, piercing action verbs and breath cues to help the students get deeper into a pose. The teacher must exude confidence and care for their students’ well being. After all, a misplaced cue or hands-on adjustment could injure someone. Example cues include:

• Lift your right leg to the sky
• Drag the hands back to the ribs
• Pivot your heel down 90 degrees
• Lengthen through the spine and kick your right heel back to the wall
• Spiral your heart open to the side
• Twist to the left
• Hinge over the hips and fold forward

There’s no room for “now we’re going to…” or “make sure to…”. You have to constantly be affirmative, strong and positive with your language. Cutting out the filler words was tough for me since I’m used to flowery language and prose (I mean, look at some of my previous articles…). Getting the right/left cues is also confusing, especially if you’re mirroring poses to the students:

Mirroring or no mirroring, I had to become more intentional with my words and think deeply about the physical and mental effect my words had on others. The same goes for cueing breathwork and meditation - those practices are deeply internal and the wrong phrases can be triggering or unhelpful.

Healthier Lifestyle & Diet

Being a student again introduced more boundaries into my schedule. I had to stop work by 6 on the weekdays and barely had time for work on the weekends. I’ve always had workaholic tendencies, so these “forced breaks” were great for my mental state. Weekends used to be prime work days because no slack messages or emails would interrupt my flow state…but their compounding effect was also subtly draining. For three months, I had to drop crypto accounting during these hours (includes commuting time):

• Tuesday: 6 - 9:30 pm
• Friday: 6 - 9:30 pm
• Saturday: 12 - 6 pm
• Sunday: 12 - 6 pm

That’s roughly 19 hours (a part-time job) that I’ve been dedicating to my studies for a quarter! The time constraints made me more productive during my working hours as I scrambled to finish client work. No more time for Bridgerton episodes during my lunch break (who am I kidding, I definitely binged the latest season). Since the timing was weird, my meals were irregular and I meal-prepped to avoid paying SF lunchtime rates. Within the last 90 days, I’ve only eaten out 3-5 times, saving my bank account but also giving me peace of mind (I know exactly what’s going into my body). And it goes without saying, but doing yoga 3x a week makes you stronger. Because I’m crazy, I was also doing swim lessons throughout April and May (I can finally do the flipturn now!), so my body was juggling yoga, swimming, tennis and weight lifting…not to mention the insane hills of San Francisco that I hike daily.

Without a regimented schedule anymore, I’m not sure how I’ll fill the additional hours - but I know it probably won’t be with more accounting. It was so refreshing to work towards something so outside of the box and tangible. Sure, I have another certification now, but it’s not about the extra three letters I can add to my name. It’s about the mental resilience, confidence and appreciation of an ancient practice that I’ve gained. There’s so much cultural appropriation in the west around yoga (i.e. athletic clothing and fancy mats, random sanskrit chanting at studios, etc) that I’m glad I know the roots, at least a fraction of them.

During the course, I also watched Breath of the Gods, a mid-2000s documentary about how yoga made it to the west in the 20th century. It began with Krishnamacharya, a yogi and scholar who taught using the Yoga Sutras. His most famous students, Iyengar and Pattabhi Jois, had their own students that practiced in India and exported their styles to the US and Europe. But as I wrote above, yoga isn’t about flexibility or holding crazy poses. It’s a program for stilling the mind and finding a glimmer of pure awareness, a state I believe all of our subconscious minds are blindly seeking. Asana is just one part of the whole.

🪷🪷🪷🪷

Overall, my brain is bursting with new concepts, and I’m ready to share what I’ve learned with others. I forgot to mention how versatile modern yoga is too; there’s pregnancy yoga¹, restorative, yin, vinyasa flow, alignment-based, etc. I’ve met several people who think yoga isn’t for them because they’re not flexible or they’re not women². But again, I’ll reiterate that yoga is a frame of mind instead of a physical limitation. I’ve started meditating for one hour on the weekends, and it’s been incredibly clarifying. Maybe my handstands have something to do with that, but these practices are all related to the singular goal of stillness. Patañjali lays out the program in the first four sutras:

1.1 Now, the teachings of yoga. 1.2 Yoga is to still the patterning of consciousness.
1.3 Then pure awareness can abide in its very nature. 1.4 Otherwise awareness takes itself to be the patterns of consciousness.

Thanks for reading and good luck on your yoga journey. 😌

Note: I’m offering free online yoga classes through Hash Basis during July 2024. I love exploring the interplay between my profession and hobbies - these points of convergence make me feel so creative and happy. You can sign up here!

Notes

Footnotes

1. I attended a pregnancy yoga class for fun, and the scene was truly comical. The women were sharing how many weeks pregnant they were, and I said, “I’m not pregnant, I’m just here to learn!” ↩

2. Yoga has definitely been feminized in the west. Several men I’ve talked with think that yoga is exclusively for women. But in ancient India, yoga was for everyone, regardless of the sex of the student. ↩