Jessie Sandoval opened Shanti Yoga Studio in St. Cloud in 2019 – right before Covid-19 showed up. While the studio offered virtual classes throughout the pandemic, Sandoval is happy to finally have students in the studio, getting to use the space she so carefully created. Shanti (peace in Sanskrit) was born out of Sandoval’s deep passion for yoga and a desire to create a space going beyond “gym yoga.” “I wanted a studio for connecting with each other, learning, growing, being mentored, being supported,” she explains. “There wasn’t a place where community members could learn more about the limbs of the practice beyond the physical – the things I found value in myself.”
Sandoval found yoga in college when her body ran down from a hectic schedule. “I was in anything that kept me moving and grooving,” she says. She accidently landed in a yoga class, struck with how good her body felt afterwards. After graduate school at Bowling Green State University, Sandoval found yoga, along with counseling, helped her manage her mental health – and she told everyone in her life about the wonders of yoga. But she didn’t begin training to be a yoga teacher until she worked in higher education at a university in Texas. “My job was extremely stressful, and I’d been burying myself in work,” says Sandoval. “I didn’t love my career, so I decided to take time off – not great financially, but probably really good personally – and I trained with a yoga teacher in Houston for a year.”
After getting married, having her first kid, and moving back near family in Minnesota, yoga took the backseat as Sandoval found herself immersed in a new season of life. But before long she went back to teaching yoga and meditation, creating her own wellness consulting business in 2013. She obtained her RYT500 certification with Yoga Alliance and completed her 500-hour training at Yoga North in Duluth, taking classes as she could afford them. “You see so many people with all this great financing to travel to India, do all these trainings one after the other,” explains Sandoval. “Those are expensive! And when you have a family and a husband who’s a teacher…” Sandoval trails off, glancing to the side as she acknowledges how much her family sacrificed for her to open the studio. “This is not something I take very lightly; to make a decision to plan and open a business… it was a lot of stress for my family.”
But you can see the joy the studio and its twenty-or-so instructors bring to Sandoval from the way her eyes light up as she describes a newer style they’re offering: aerial yoga. Giddy about the benefits, Sandoval put aerial yoga in her business plan from the start, specially building the ceiling for the practice. While students get excited about the acrobatic nature of the class, it’s really about “being able to feel the differences in your body in a safer way, without holding all your body weight.” While some students come for the group classes, Shanti also offers private classes for those not ready to be in a group setting. “Maybe they never will be,” adds Sandoval, explaining many private students get referred from a therapist or counselor. “Maybe they’re transitioning from a surgery, a trauma, an AA group – you name it.”
And they find a home at Shanti, just as Sandoval imagined when she opened the space. “We’re a studio focused on Yoga as a practice beyond the physical benefits. We believe in the healing elements of Yoga for the mind and body, and we meet people where they are.” And no two people come to yoga with the same goals or motivations so it’s important to have authentic teachers who make classes accessible to every student. “That’s what makes [the classes] so unique for our students,” she explains – and they’re not just going to one class. “I have these really intense yogis that love the heated practice, they love working and sweating and being in their body. And yet, the next day they’re in a yin class, and they just melt into a little puddle.”
Seeking to bring in students of all backgrounds, Sandoval feels encouraged by the diversity in experience, gender identity, and ethnicity of the yogis who attend the studio’s classes. Most of her evening classes feature a fifty-fifty split between men and women, along with a wide age range, which thrills her. “If you drop into one of my classes,” she explains, “you’re going to see somebody in their thirties and somebody in their sixties, so that tells me we are hitting those goals of being accessible and open [to any] level, and [creating] an opportunity for people to really drop in where they need to be that day.”
While Shanti continues to grow, Sandoval is already thinking outside the studio walls. She’s partnering with an organization called Challenge to Change, Inc. after applying for a grant in her school district. “My ultimate goal is to infiltrate our public school system with yoga and mindfulness,” she says, noting they’re going to be piloting the program with two elementaries in the coming year. And Sandoval’s not stopping there. She’s dreaming about partnerships with the local hospitals and medical groups along with mental health facilities. “We want to keep finding ways to be out in the community.”
So how does she do it all? “By learning to let go of things I don’t have control of,” Sandoval says with a self-knowing grin. “My daily practice reminds me to increase the space between the stimulus of whatever riles me up or I think I need to get done.” When she’s able to pause before acting, she utilizes the power of the breath. “I always teach my students, ‘All you need is three breaths!’ It just changes my perspective. It makes me realize I’m going to do the best job I can, but I don’t need to keep aiming for that perfectionist quality.”
Sandoval also trusts her talented teachers to run things when she can’t be there, and she’s utilized outsourcing for things outside of her wheelhouse. “I can do [all those things], but it puts a lot of strain on my ability to mentor new teachers, plan my own classes, think strategically, and be the visionary of the business.” But Sandoval quickly adds that the studio isn’t really about her, and she doesn’t like to make herself the focus. “It’s really about the community,
A takeaway from three years in business? “Keeping things simple,” states Sandoval. “If we start to offer everything to everybody, we’re not going to do things well.” The focus begins with growing Shanti’s community and connecting with the neighborhoods around them, building relationships one at a time. “That’s what Yoga is.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
