Posabilities was not a life long dream come true.  If you had asked me two years before I started Posabilities, it would not have even been on my radar!  So you might say it came pounding on my door and said, “Katey, you’ve got to do this!”

Flashback about two years ago.  I had been practicing as a Physical Therapist for 20 years and held a comfortable (if not always fun) middle management position with a large health care provider.  I love being a Physical Therapist, but after 20 years I was feeling like I needed a new challenge.  At the same time, I was enjoying the many benefits of my own regular yoga practice.  So a reasonable option seemed to be to pursue my Yoga Teacher Training (YTT).  I could continue with my secure full time job, and teach a yoga class or two as a side “hobby job.”

I started down the path of finding an YTT program that I could attend in my spare time.  One day, I casually  asked Amy Figoli, owner of the Maine Yoga House, if she knew of any YTT programs that would fit my schedule, and lo and behold she was preparing to offer her first one that next fall and it would be a weekend format which was perfect for me!  Rap, rap, someone’s at the door!

Fall arrived, and I began to open the door a crack as I started my YTT.  How exciting!  Wait, this is intense.  In addition to the once a month three day training, I have to show up at class twice a week?  I need to practice yoga every day?  I need to write papers, read books, and OMG! I have to delve into some deep self-inquiry?  My employer had allowed me some flexibility around my seven month training, but I was going to need way more flexibility than they could offer.  I’d opened the door a crack to check things out, but I was being asked to open it even wider.  What to do?  Open it some more? Close it?  Stand back a safe distance and peak through it?  Rap rap.

I opened the door a little more, left my secure middle management position, and went back to direct patient care which allowed me greater flexibility.  This was great!  In addition to greater flexibility in my schedule, I was occasionally able to use yoga postures with patients on their road to recovery. After 20 years as a Physical Therapist I was having an epiphany.  These yoga postures were having significant positive effects on my patient’s outcomes.  Calming of the nervous system, decreased pain response, improved posture and body awareness, and the patients loved it!  At the same time, I made the discovery that there was a whole field out there called Yoga Therapy.  The rap rap was becoming a knock, knock.

My pursuit of a hobby job was becoming a calling.  Knock knock – “Come on Katey.  Open the door and step through it.”  Despite some misgivings, with the urging of my husband, Jeff, I opened the door wider.  I committed to a 300 hour Professional Yoga Therapist trainingand headed out to Tucson for my first two week module.  Surrounded by inspiring instructors, Yoga Therapists, and fellow students the knocking at the door was becoming more and more persistent.  I began to formulate a vision.  My vision included a space housing a studio and a clinic space where I could offer Physical Therapy, Yoga, and Yoga Therapy, other instructors, and health and wellness providerssharing that space with me, and the space would be close to Main Street. This vision had a name, Posabilities, and I envisioned a time line of three to four years…

Bam, bam, bam – come out from behind that door!  Four months (not years that I had planned) after my vision had begun to gel my husband found a building one block off of Main Street, Norway that could be retrofitted to be fully accessible, and include a studio and clinic space for myself and other practitioners.  Again, I had my misgivings, but the universe rarely knocks twice, and Jeff continued to support and urge me forward.  So I stepped through the door and headed down the path to Posabilities!

Posabilities has now been open for four months, and I have been blessed by the many people that have traveled and continue to travel the path with me.  My YTT instructor, Amy Figoli, and my sister in law, Ruth lead me to the door and urged me to open it.  The OH Yoga! instructors (more on OH Yoga! next week), and the other collaborators at Posabilities have brought  richness to the journey that I could never have manifested on my own.  My husband, Jeff, has been with me every step of the way – sometimes leading, sometimes following, but usually right by my side, and never letting me turn back or take the easier path.  And finally, the members of the growing Posabilities community who sustain and nourish me as we continue to forge the path forward!

“Life is a gift, and it offers us the privilege, opportunity, and responsibility to give something back by becoming more.”  ~ Tony Robbins

Katey Hawes, owner and founder of Posabilities, Inc.., is a physical therapist, registered yoga teacher, and yoga therapist.

You may find her at Facebook.com/posabilities4u, Twitter @Posabilities4u, and Google+.