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Published on: 1/4/2008
Last Visited: 1/9/2008
Bliss finds contentment after leaving nursing for eco-friendly yoga
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Pamela Bliss . . . ,We want to support anything that has to do with helping people come into alignment with themselves.,View Larger
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Having an environment-friendly yoga studio brought YogAsylum studio owner Pamela Bliss' two passions together.
As a part of her yoga practice, Bliss turned to ahimsa -- a Sanskrit word that means the practice of nonviolence toward the self and others -- in her decision to make her Brookfield yoga studio environment-friendly.She also has worked to spread her mission by joining the pilot program and being a member of the Green Yoga Association, based in Oakland, Calif.
Bliss, 38, spent a year considering every aspect of her business and how it affects the environment as part of the organization's Green Studios Pilot Program, then spent another year moderating discussions with other yoga studio owners about the effects of participating in the pilot's second year.This year, the third year, Bliss has stepped back from the program to concentrate on finishing her master's degree in transpersonal psychology and eco-psychology from Naropa University in Boulder, Colo., but is looking forward to the three-year pilot resulting in a manual for members of the green organization expected to be released in mid-2008.There are more than 70 Green Yoga studios in the association.
YogAsylum has classes in several yoga styles, Pilates and tai chi, serving about 200 students a week.Bliss said that with moveable partitions dividing the three studios, it's possible to triple capacity at the location, opening up space to accommodate larger groups for concerts, workshops and classes.The studio also has massage, an intuitive life coach and yoga teacher training.
"We want to support anything that has to do with helping people come into alignment with themselves," she said.
Career change needed
An Oconomowoc native, Bliss opened the studio in July 2002 with the concept of an environment-friendly place for yoga.Health of people and the earth has been an important part of Bliss' life and a catalyst for her career, which started in nursing.After a decade as a nurse, Bliss decided to work with people on illness prevention rather than as patients in a hospital intensive care unit, where she worked.
"Had they made different choices, had awareness of possibilities, what I witnessed clearly could have been prevented," she said of some of the patients she cared for."I no longer wanted to be helping people when it was too late, but I wanted to be assisting people preventively and empowering them."
Creating a studio with cork floors and using cleaning chemicals that would not hurt the environment was a challenge because at that time such materials were more expensive and not as widely available as they are now, Bliss said.
Although environment-friendly products cost more than traditional products, Bliss said, she believed that the more she did to educate people about the green movement, the more it would spread and, eventually, help drive down those costs.
"I felt like a little fish swimming upstream for a long time," she said.
Since then, she has joined the Green Yoga organization, which was founded in 2004.She was a presenter at the second annual convention and was one of four speakers for the national press conference.She remains active in the organization.
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