YOGA AND THE CITY: Q&A WITH PASSPORT TO PRANA

After taking Toronto by storm, Passport to Prana continues to spread the yoga love by expanding this year to Ottawa, Vancouver and, starting next month, Montreal. The way the program works is simple: For a one-time fee of $20 to $30 (depending on the city), passport holders can attend one free yoga class at each of the participating studios. With yoga classes typically going for $15 to $20 a pop, this little card is a steal for novice and advanced yogis alike. We spoke to YuMee Chung, founder of Passport to Prana and a yoga instructor herself, to find out how it all began and where this little-initiative-that-could is headed.

Lifestyle Magazine: You left the world of corporate law to become a yoga teacher. Why?

YuMee Chung: I started taking yoga when I was an articling student, which is kind of like an internship for lawyers. It's a pretty busy year, meaning you work really long days and pretty much you just run home at night to sleep and change your suit and come back again in the morning.

It was during that year [1997] that I started doing yoga, and it totally saved my life. Where everybody else was losing their mind and incredibly stressed out, I found that the yoga practice kept me balanced. So as I was going along in my practice as a lawyer, I found that I was turning more and more to the yoga and I felt, wow, this is a real passion of mine. I was lucky enough to be in a position to start a yoga studio at that point with some really great lawyer friends of mine who were also great fans of yoga. So that's how it evolved for me. It just went from a passion to something that I did full-time.

LM: What was it that you liked about yoga?

Chung: Well the one thing about it was it totally popped me out of my stressful mental pattern. I found that I would get to a point where I think I would be living, breathing, sleeping my legal practice, and it was just consuming my whole life. I was under so much stress. And then I'd go to a yoga class and by the end of that hour I'd be in a completely different headspace. I could go home at night and think, ‘Oh, what was I so upset about, it's just a little bit of work and I'll tackle it in the morning,’ and I'd get a good night's sleep and have a nice meal. So it kind of got me out of what I considered an unhealthy mental rut, and it put everything in context. It helped me to really understand what was really important in life.

And, you know, those things are not necessarily impressing your senior lawyer, it's not necessarily making a lot of money, [but] it had really to do with living a balanced and healthy and happy life. I, like so many people, went into my career because I thought that career would give me a good life. I went in thinking, ‘Wow lawyers seem to have really successful, wonderful lives, they can afford to do things,’ but I didn't go in there to sacrifice all of the things that mattered to me, like my health, like my relationships, like taking care of my family.

LM: So when you started the yoga school with your lawyer colleagues, you were still practicing law at that time?

Chung: Yeah, I was actually. In fact, my yoga studio was right across the street from my office. So I had this double life where I would be working as a lawyer during the day, and then I would run over after work or on the weekends and I would be teaching yoga and helping to run this business.

LM: And now you teach yoga full-time?

Chung: I do [her high-profile clients have included Val Kilmer and Diane Lane]. And in addition to teaching yoga – which I absolutely love, that's my first passion – I also run Passport to Prana, which is a business, a yoga-related business obviously. I'm also a consultant, and I take consulting work only if it's compatible with my yoga. So what that means is right now I'm only taking jobs that are related to taking care of the Earth. For example, I'm working for a solar company right now. And all of the companies that I work for are ones that I feel really good about doing work for, that I feel really are harmonious with my outlook. Interestingly enough all of the companies I've worked for in the last few years have been green.