Longboater looks to keep flow of yoga going

As a  kid, Valerie Schneiderman was a competitive athlete.

So much so, she found herself a spot on the 1984 U.S. Olympic rhythmic gymnastics team.

But most of that drive was focused inward.

“I absolutely held myself to a high standard and was competitive with myself more so than being competitive against somebody else, so maybe I still have some of those elements,” Schneiderman said. “I can be a bit hard on myself, but the yoga has softened it.”

The yoga she is referring to is Ashtanga yoga, a type of practice that Schneiderman describes as a moving meditation. Ashtanga is a breath-based practice where students learn to inhale and exhale at an even pace in coordination with yoga postures. 

Schneiderman said that while students are doing a vigorous physical practice that builds strength and stamina and increases balance and mobility, the breathing techniques of Ashtanga calm the nervous system and focus the mind. The meditative quality is developed over time, Schneiderman said. 

“There’s a lot of different limbs to the big tree of yoga, and the practices all have the same, I would say, kind of end goal of getting to know your true nature and calming the mind and opening the heart, connecting to something that’s larger than your small self,” Schneiderman said.

Schneiderman began studying yoga when she lived in San Diego. She became enthralled with it.

A few years later, Schneiderman moved to Ridgefield, Conn., with her young family and found that there was no Ashtanga yoga studio. So, she started inviting interested students into her home to teach them.

When the crowd got too big, she opened her own studio. That was 15 years ago, and the studio is still open today.

In May, Schneiderman and her husband, Ross, made their move to Longboat Key permanent after visiting the area for the past six years. Schneiderman is now running into a situation she’s faced before. There is no traditional Ashtanga yoga studio in the area. The closest is in St. Petersburg.

While she currently isn’t considering being a studio owner again, she does want to teach and is starting to gauge interest in Ashtanga yoga.

Ashtanga has helped Schneiderman learn to sit still, something she wasn’t used to. She grew up in an active household. Her mom and younger brother are golf pros, her oldest brother was always skiing or surfing, and her dad would constantly ride his bike or run marathons.

“It’s not like taking a class just to take a class. It’s a practice. It develops over time, so the dedication, the consistency, that practice element, it’s very attractive to me."

 

While she wasn’t introduced to yoga until after her gymnastics career, she knows it can help athletes. Plus, she found similar feelings in yoga that she had felt while training for gymnastics.

“I think it’s the practice element,” she said. “It’s not like taking a class just to take a class. It’s a practice. It develops over time, so the dedication, the consistency, that practice element, it’s very attractive to me. So that element, without having it be competitive, I think, is a nice complement to what I did when I was a kid.”

And not only does the practice element parallel her gymnastics career, so does the travel.

During her gymnastics career, Schneiderman traveled the world, which she said was a big part of her education, perhaps just as important as her conventional schooling.

“From a young age, I had that sense that there was a lot more than my little neighborhood where I lived or in my comfortable circumstances,” she said.

For gymnastics, she traveled to Eastern European countries before the Berlin Wall was down, where she saw what life was like in a different culture.

For yoga, she started traveling to India, another place that was even more different than what she was used to. But once there, she had a flashback to her childhood.

“I loved that when I was a kid,” she said. “To be in a place that was so foreign, so different, so that is maybe one thing that’s attractive about both.”

Since 2016, Schneiderman has taken yoga students to India. She watches as they explore a place so outside their comfort zone, just as she did as a young gymnast.

And just how she wanted to train for gymnastics every day, she now doesn’t feel right if she doesn’t practice yoga each day. She said it’s just as much a part of her routine as brushing her teeth.

“It’s always about meeting yourself where you are, noticing what’s out of balance and doing different techniques, different yoga postures, breathing, focused attention to bring a balance,” she said.

Now, unlike when she first started, Schneider can sit and focus on her breathing. She knows others would find it challenging, but she knows the payoff is worth it and wants to help others learn the practice.

She said there is a common misconception that you have to be flexible to do yoga, and that isn’t true. She said that teachers, like herself, can instruct at the pace of the student. In the end, practicing can help calm the nervous system, lower students’ blood pressure and heart rates and help them unplug from the world for a bit.

“Yoga is for anyone who is interested in it, and that’s I think sometimes what limits people from trying it, is how they somehow think they need to be able to do it before someone teaches them,” she said.

Schneiderman said anyone who is interested in learning Ashtanga yoga can email her at [email protected].