Yoga for the Community: Humbled Warriors Yoga

If you ask Stacey Field to describe her journey of becoming a yogi and yoga studio owner, she might describe it as unexpected. After Stacey first took a class with her mentor and business partner, Jamie Forbes, she was hooked on yoga. As the two women soon formed a close friendship, Stacey’s husband, Alex, floated the idea of the two of them opening up their own studio.

“Jamie and I laughed it off at first, but then the idea kept coming back to us,” Stacey recalls. “Our conversations of dreams turned into reality when I obtained my teacher licensure, and Humbled Warriors Yoga studio was born.”

Stacey received her RYT-200 licensure from Asheville Yoga Center in July of 2019, and the opening process began. While Stacey was a newbie when it came to business ownership, she felt a driving motivator to pursue both teaching and business ownership.

“Both being a Yoga teacher and opening the business came hand-in-hand with one another for me,” she explains.

“It took a lot of hard work and sacrifices to get the studio going and to keep it running through COVID-19,” Stacey adds. “With no experience in running a business, I had (and still have!) a lot to learn.”

Thankfully, Stacey and Jamie were able to continue moving Humbled Warriors forward throughout the pandemic by teaching their classes via Zoom and Facebook Live. Now, they are operating at 30% capacity. Under the new guidelines that so many businesses are learning, Humbled Warriors implements social distancing, masks, temperature checks, and extensive cleaning protocols to keep their yoga students safe, healthy, and still in their rhythm.

Because for Humbled Warriors Yoga, the practice of yoga is about more than just gaining flexibility or building strength: it’s about cultivating connections.

“One of my favorite things about yoga is the sense or feeling of community it can bring — the coming together of humans of all shapes, sizes, backgrounds, ages, and interests to share in the same experience,” Stacey explains. “Yoga literally means to ‘yoke’ or ‘bind,’ but yoga is more than just binding our bodies to our minds and to our spirits. When we practice yoga, we have the potential to form a deep and loving connection with our students, teachers, and anyone else that we meet on our journey.”

Stacey says since opening Humbled Warriors, she has felt a sense of purpose in a new and distinct way. After her own life was transformed by the practice of yoga, she felt the sense that it was her duty to share her love of yoga with all those in her community and start building those mind, body, and heart connections.

“I love what I do because I get to help people,” Stacey says. “I love seeing people transformed by yoga; I love seeing their inner beauty shine bright in their eyes after a class.”