Bryan Kest Yoga: Poweryoga online

“What is your company’s name?” seems the most straightforward question to start my interview with Bryan Kest, pioneer of Power Yoga Santa Monica and co-founder of Yoga Alliance.

In 1964, Kest was born. He lived in Detroit, Michigan. His father, a doctor, persuaded him to take up yoga in 1979. At 16, David Williams, the man responsible for bringing Ashtanga Yoga to the United States, sent Kest to Hawaii to study with him.

Kest went to Mysore, India, in 1983 to join the founder of Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga, K. Pattabhi Jois.

A year later, Kest went back to the United States to study holistic health and nutrition and attended Ryokan College in Los Angeles, California. He also worked at Esteem, an eating disorder treatment facility in Santa Monica, where he was a yoga therapist for patients.

Founded in 1995, Santa Monica Power Yoga was Kest’s first yoga studio. Since studying with S.N. Goenka, Kest has included a meditation on his classroom instruction and teacher training. Vipassana meditation principles influenced Kest’s donation-based class philosophy.

He has three beautiful kids with ex-wife Jazmine Pierre-Lys, whom he divorced in 2015. He now lives in mountains near Santa Barbara, California, with his partner, Melissa, and their child.

At the age of 58, he still preaches to the hundreds of poweryoga yogis who attend his dynamic poweryoga workout classes, and a simple question doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy. Nevertheless, powerflow yoga has been life-changing for many, and Kest is living proof of the power in power yoga.

“It’s Santa Monica Power Yoga or PowerYoga .com, but I’m not sure,” he responds in his characteristically nonchalant manner.

He refers the question to his business partner, Christine Fang, who agrees to get back to me with a response.

The brilliance of poweryoga with Bryan Kest Yoga

If this makes you assume that Bryan Kest is a flaky yogi that just practices poweryoga, think again. This exchange is merely symbolic of his unique and non-traditional approach to life. This approach has enabled his company to evolve organically, without attachment of the ego, results, fancy logos, or trademarks in the powerflow yoga space.

Regardless of its name, there is no denying the power behind Kest Yoga. This was the name they ultimately settled upon, which was delivered as promised the following day.

PowerYoga online has worldwide powerflow yoga workshops, powerflow yoga retreats, and poweryoga teacher training, poweryoga web-based and in-studio retail stores, powerflow yoga DVDs, powerflow multimedia products, as well as an international distribution and operations infrastructure being utilized to incubate growing businesses.

It’s quite impressive for someone who admits that he has “never had a vision in my life. I still don’t have a vision. I don’t even know what I want to be when I grow up.” 

Resilience within the poweryoga space

Now fifty-eight, Bryan Kest has been teaching poweryoga for the past four decades, becoming one of the most popular instructors in the industry.

A native of Detroit, he began his yogic journey at the age of 15 at the insistence of his physician father, who felt so strongly about poweryoga’s benefits that he threatened to kick his young son out of the house if he didn’t try it.

The practice resonated with Bryan Kest immediately. Before long, he moved to Maui and studied with renowned teachers: David Williams and Brad Ramsey. Later Kent traveled to Mysore, India, where he learned from Pattabhi Jois, founder of the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute.

His first teaching position presented itself shortly after Bryan moved to Los Angeles. He was contacted by a cousin, whose wife had the idea of offering powerflow yoga to her patients struggling with eating disorders.

The response to his energetic teaching style was contagious. And soon, Kent was leading power yoga workout classes at gyms and studios all over Los Angeles.

Since moving to mountains near Santa Barbara, California, Bryan teaches poweryoga online via his web platform with on-demand and live classes.

The path to entrepreneurship for Bryan Kest

The transition to starting his own powerflow yoga business evolved naturally. The facilities at Yoga Works (where he was teaching at the time) were no longer able to accommodate all of the students who wanted to practice.

“I got sick of turning people away, so I went out looking for my own place,” he recalls. And how did that translate into a business? “It was easy, I just put a box at the front of the room and that was my business.

”Kest’s decision to run his classes on donation demonstrates his early commitment to aligning his business practices with the teachings of yoga.

The concept was inspired by his experience with Vipassana (insight meditation), which offers food, lodging, and instruction for its ten-day courses at no cost to its students across the globe.

“Vipassana is a living, breathing example that generosity works; that you don’t have to be greedy to be prosperous.”

The building blocks of accessibility and trust

Bryan Kest’s desire is to provide everyone with access to poweryoga, regardless of financial capacity. “Yoga is like church,” he elaborates. “You shouldn’t be denied yoga simply because you can’t afford to go to a class.”

The donation-based model for his powerflow yoga classes is also about trust. “Part of my yoga practice is trusting that the universe will provide for me and take care of me,” he says.

“If there’s enough money in the box then I’ll be able to pay my rent and pay my mortgage at home and keep going. If there’s not, I guess that I have to start looking for something else to do”.

It’s also a vehicle to cultivate generosity and trust among students. Students approach a large unlocked box full of cash at the end of every power yoga workout class. “At one point or another, we are going to have to start saying ‘I trust you’. You are an adult and you’ll do what’s right”.

And although they’ve experienced people stealing from the box in powerflow yoga, Kest says it doesn’t matter, “because there will be exactly the amount of money there that I am supposed to get.”

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Trust is also the backbone of Kest’s relationship with his business partner, Christine Fang. Fang reluctantly came to Bryan’s power yoga workout class in 2000 at the recommendation of her hair-dresser. Fang holds an undergraduate degree in business administration from Berkeley and an MBA from UCLA’s Anderson School.

Her experience in the traditional business world is extensive. This includes work at a New York investment bank, finance and strategic planning positions at large corporations such as Technicolor and Bugle Boy apparel. She is also a business owner of a coffee house in LA which she built and later sold with her husband. 

The business structure was created to capitalize on the population Kest has access to.

Unhappy in her job at an internet startup, Fang signed up for Bryan’s teacher training. Fang soon after approached him one morning following meditation and powerflow yoga about helping with his business. To start, Chris told him that she would only take a salary of $500 per month.

This demonstrated to Bryan that she wasn’t in it for the money, but rather, to grow the powerflow yoga business. “If you come to me with that mentality, then my desire is to give because I see that you are being generous and I want to be generous back.”

Kest describes Fang as an “angel” whose “role is massive for Santa Monica Power Yoga…to have become what it has become.” He says that he couldn’t and wouldn’t have done it without her.

Chris’s role with the company has naturally blossomed into the thriving partnership it is now, years later. 

They are a compatible team, with mutual respect and different, but complementary skill sets. Each also has an understanding of the other’s expertise. “Bryan has taught yoga, and I have built a business,” says Chris, who now oversees the nuts and bolts of the operation.

She enjoys applying the tools she learned in business school, and balancing that with this creative nature that we know life is all about, and finding this middle path.

Intuition in the business space

”Although Chris’ corporate experience has impacted the growth of Kest Yoga, the company’s approach remains fluid ” not dominated by formal business plans, budgets, or PowerPoint presentations. “When I feel like I want to do something, I do it,” Bryan remarks. “I don’t look at the market conditions.

Their business structure was created to capitalize on the population Kest has access to. The lines between revenue streams are blurred as the various businesses commingle and overlap.

When Bryan travels for workshops, Chris makes products available from their retail store.

They are documenting Bryan’s poweryoga teacher training, thereby creating additional media for distribution. Including powerflow yoga lectures, powerflow yoga DVDs, and perhaps a powerflow yoga book.

And while Chris’s recent analysis of Santa Monica Power Yoga’s revenue streams showed that, outside of Bryan’s teaching, any one of these ancillary businesses might not survive on its own, it is the synergy between the activities that make everything work.

What begins as a conversation about “business” with the partners of Kest Yoga transforms into a fascinating philosophical discussion; in which distinctions and definitions of traditional concepts and terms are explored.

What is a business? Success? Competition? How are the yogic principles of karma, impermanence, and non-attachment applied to the day-to-day functioning of a company?

Bryan Kest Yoga: Business redefined

They view business as an extension of yoga. Kest describes this as “the quality of your mind while partaking in any endeavor,” so anything one does with the qualities of “mindfulness, calmness, intention, focus, and consciousness” is yoga.

Making the practice the priority, and allowing that to permeate all aspects of her life is what drives Fang, “so whatever we label business is just another aspect.

”Bryan Kest is careful to distinguish between the terms ‘prosperity’ and ‘success’,” because he explains, “our whole idea of success is tied up in this dollar sign.”

So how does Bryan Kest measure success? “That I’m happy. And I can support myself, which actually you don’t have to say because that goes back to being happy.”

And what about the competition? “Yoga comes with certain laws,” explains Bryan, “and one of the laws is karma. And if you understand karma, then you understand that no matter what you can ever possibly do, you are gonna get yours. Nobody can hurt you.

The universe is going to give you exactly what you need, to get the lessons you need to get, to become what you are becoming. So there is no such thing as competition. We made it up out of our own fear. It doesn’t exist. It’s a made-up idea.”

“When I feel like I want to do something, I do it. I don’t look at the market conditions.” – Bryan Kest

Bryan Kest shares with us an old Cherokee story. A grandfather tells his grandchildren about two wolves who are fighting fiercely in his head. One wolf represents greed, jealousy, competitiveness, fear, and malevolence; the other, love, compassion, honesty, generosity, and benevolence. ”˜Which one wins the fight?’ asks his grandson. ” ˜The one you feed food to and make strong.’ “In other words,”

Bryan explains, “we all have these two qualities in us. The one you give food to and make strong” is the one that will dominate your life. 

“If you take refuge in money, then it will take you down the path of lying” adds Chris. “If you take refuge in other things, like your own happiness or honesty, then it will lead you down another path.”

Honesty and generosity are the two driving forces behind Kest’s approach to his poweryoga business. “Not being greedy, and not being fearful and being honest” are important concepts in yoga, he explains. “Even if that means losing money in order to maintain honesty, integrity is more valuable than money to me.

It’s not worth sacrificing integrity for financial gain.

”The practical application of these philosophies demonstrates that these yogis practice what they preach.

Although Kest Yoga operates two thriving studios, home to fifteen instructors, the model is not that of a traditional studio owner. Instead of paying teachers per power yoga workout class, or per head ”the common industry practices ” the instructors pay Kest an average of $55 in rent for each power yoga workout class they teach and retain 100% of the donations collected. Instructor Ashley Turner describes working in this independent environment as a “huge blessing” that is “empowering because we have responsibility and autonomy.

[It’s] like running our individual businesses out of his yoga studio.”

Autonomy is key

Bryan Kest does not control what poses teachers can and cannot teach, and instructors appreciate the opportunity to explore their own styles. Ally Hamilton now teaches exclusively at Kest’s Santa Monica Power Yoga, after working at multiple studios in New York and Los Angeles.

She compares this experience with other studios that have “a very rigid idea of how they want their classes taught” in which there is “a strict sequencing format” or studio politics, and feels that with these types of restraints, it’s impossible to “fully speak to your heart” as a power yoga workout instructor.

And while rent is charged on a sliding scale to enable new instructors to build their student base, Bryan Kest feels this model weeds out those who shouldn’t be teaching. “The teacher has to pay us rent.

If he can’t get anybody to come to his class, then he’ll be losing money every class. Therefore, he’s not going to stay being a teacher for very long.

The fact that their instructors are supporting themselves, surviving, and even thriving is marketplace proof that their experimental model is working, Kest and Fang said.

Empowering entrepreneurs has also motivated another experimental venture. Kest Yoga acts as an “incubator” for Yogitoes- a product company that makes skid-less towels that are especially useful for a power yoga workout.

Using the operations and infrastructure created to distribute Kest’s poweryoga media products has enabled this small business in powerflow yoga to grow rapidly.

“There is no such thing as competition. We made it up out of our own fear. It doesn’t exist. It’s a made-up idea.” – Bryan Kest

“Business is evolving,” says Chris. “A lot of what you learn in poweryoga is that things change. It’s impermanent. It’s a flow. But business is changing and learning.” Chris manages a staff of nine.

Their combined backgrounds in poweryoga and business mirror that of the partners. She runs weekly staff meetings, uses “normal business mechanisms”, and believes that communication is a key ingredient of effective management.

She also leads by example through practicing yoga daily. “If you fall off your practice, your principals become phony and the staff will detect that,” Chris explains.

Bryan Kest acknowledges the challenges inherent in managing employees with distinct personalities. He strives to maintain “a certain culture within the company, a certain vibration.”

He views hiring, dealing with, and firing staff as an “art form”. In comparing other work environments with that of Kest Yoga, Chris notes that there “is a lot of clarity here.

The energy flows a lot more freely, so if you don’t belong, it will be more obvious faster.

”What does the future hold for Bryan Kest and his team at Santa Monica Power Yoga? “One of our goals is to spread yoga and consciousness. So that tempers all the other goals.”

They’ve discussed opening additional studios. Or alternatively, using that energy to instead empower others to open donation-based poweryoga studios.

They periodically discuss the possibilities and all together decide on a direction. This is, of course, without attachment to the results of whatever those future plans might be. 

Whatever you may be, be authentic says Bryan Kest

Bryan Kest’s recommendation to others is “to do whatever you do honestly, socially consciously, and fearlessly. Don’t worry about what the result is,” he urges. “It will be what it is.

But give it a try. If it doesn’t work out, then you’ll do something else.” He notes that “what works in business is the same thing that works in any aspect of life because we’re all human. Whether it’s government, whether it’s the law, whether it’s business, whether it’s yoga, whether it’s marriage, we all bring our human stuff into it.”

Therefore, there’s “no such thing as a business. It’s just you.”

Check our article on the best online streaming platforms in which we have included Power Yoga Workout Classes Online with Bryan Kest.

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