Kalisse Kelly finds independence with yoga
Published:Wednesday | August 9, 2023 | 12:06 AMKrysta Anderson/Staff Reporter
Sunday, August 6 marked the day of Jamaica’s independence and many took the liberty of celebrating in shades of black, gold, and green. Much like the occasion, Kalisse Kelly found it freeing to set her nine-to-five aside and pursue a more holistic career path: Yoga.
“Yoga changed my life. It makes me calm, challenges me and pushes me. It allows me to look into myself and see the truth and I love it. Yoga is a holistic practice. We often teach the physical aspects because it’s easier to tell someone to lift up their hand than to focus on their breath or their thoughts. But it’s mostly mental,” Kelly told Lifestyle.
She continued, “When one is practising yoga as a part of their lifestyle, it becomes a beautiful combination of both physical and mental as you start to understand how to balance all the elements of the practice.”
Kelly never saw herself being a yoga teacher. She was a manager in building systems and ensuring quality, but she did admit to always having a creative side and being a lover of kinesthetics. Her decision was based on the fact that she had been making all this effort in other endeavours while leaving her own goals behind. So she took a chance on herself and registered her business, Kalisse Kelly Yoga (KKY), in October 2021. Finally, she was doing something that was beneficial for herself and her well-being.
Setting a mandate of three months to get the ball rolling as an entrepreneur, Kelly, who has been practising yoga for seven years, opened her own studio 17 months ago. “I am certified in Iyengar based yoga with Yoga Angel international [and] I teach it with a focus on yoga for the modern world,” she added.
The yoga specialist loves that Iyengar is a very steady form of yoga, “that allows you to access your body through alignment and props, if accessible. It challenges the body but still allows for relaxation”.
So how exactly was Kelly introduced to yoga? She fell in love with the Fit Television show Namaste Yoga and thought she’d give it a try. “I tried to do the poses. I could not do any of them,” she admitted with a laugh.
But she never gave up hope. By 2016, she started tapping into the practice on a more serious note because she felt unstable, sad, unmotivated and low in energy. According to Kelly, the health benefits of yoga include improved mobility and flexibility, improved fitness and strength, improved posture, body alignment, breath control, better overall movement and better sex life.
When asked how meditation comes into play, she explained that it is one of the eight limbs of yoga. “People may think of meditation as this big overwhelming unattainable task. It simply means to focus on one thing. When a Rastaman says, ‘Me a guh hol’ a meditation’, what is he saying? He’s saying, he’s going to focus his energy on something. We can hold a traditional form of mediation by clearing our thoughts or focusing on breathing but we can also do it by quietly sitting and watching the world go by,” she revealed.
Her goal is to impart knowledge to her students and allow them to access the greatest potential with their minds, bodies and spirits. Her goals for KKY include diversified services, health and wellness retail and sustainability initiatives.