Meet Afton Carraway | Yoga Therapist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Afton Carraway and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Afton, can you talk to us a bit about the social impact of your business?
I truly believe that when people feel safe and well in their bodies, they can show up in their external lives as the best version of themselves. Connection roots down deep within us, and then branches out into our surroundings. Yoga and yoga therapy (or any kind of mindfulness movement practice) can tether our attention to into ourselves enough to enable us to nurture and water our roots. When that happens, we are able to grow our branches stronger toward our families, friends, and other surrounding communities.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
As a yoga therapist, I use modalities of yoga to help people build trust, strength, forgiveness, and love in themselves and their bodies. Yoga therapy is the application of yoga applied to specific conditions of human ailment and suffering. The word pathology – the study of disease – comes from the greek word pathologia, meaning the study of suffering. One’s suffering is exactly what we address in yoga therapy. It can be applied to disease, diagnoses, or any general feeling of unease in one’s body or mind.

I completed my 3-year, 1500-hour yoga therapy certification after I’d been teaching group yoga classes for over a decade. Public, group yoga classes are wonderful and can offer a lot to a student who is regularly practicing. However, over my years of teaching, I grew to understand that not everyone could get the specific attention or instruction they needed from a group class, much less have the time or ability to get to a studio class for a variety of different reasons. With yoga therapy, I offer yoga tools that are specific to an individual’s needs, and teach clients practices which can be done at home, on their own time, without the confines of studio schedules and public exposure.

I’m still learning lessons about how to run my own business outside of a studio setting and on my own terms. Yoga therapy doesn’t have the greatest business model because it teaches a sense of autonomy over one’s own health and wellness. My goal as a yoga therapist is to teach others that they can use the tools of yoga on their own terms – whether that be practicing more proficiently while in-studio, practicing at home at their own pace, applying yogic principles to their everyday life, or some combination of all of these scenarios. While it may take anywhere from a handful of sessions to a few years of working with someone in order for a client to learn the tools they need to practice on their own, ideally I’m only seeing people until we reach the mitigation or management of their suffering/dis-ease. Of course should someone want to learn more beyond mitigation or management of suffering – I’m here for that too! Yoga – in its greatest essence – is a way of life; wellness happens to be a by-product of that lifestyle that can be applied therapeutically.

Yoga therapy is still a burgeoning field of practice. When I tell people that I’m a yoga therapist, it generally leads to a lot of questions about the hows and whats of its benefits. I think the biggest realization I’ve come to for myself in my work as a yoga therapist, is that no one will know what you do and what yoga can offer unless you tell them about it – so I’ve been working on giving myself more exposure on the topic 🙂

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I love taking my friends to Barton Springs here in Austin, TX so we would definitely hit that up at least once while they were here, weather permitting. We would likely have coffee and eat meals mostly on the East side of town where I live in Austin, and definitely do some yoga at a few of the amazing studios here in town, namely Pure Yoga Texas and Practice Yoga Austin.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I’d like to recognize all of the yoga communities out there trying to make a difference over a buck. Staying afloat as a business is vital to studios offering yoga AND those who have done so without loosing their mission to teach the essence of yoga (trust, strength, forgiveness, and love for oneself) are the true artisans in the business of wellness. Also, I’d like to give a shoutout to my daughters who motivate me every day to stand tall, and proudly be the mother, teacher, and human that I am today.

Website: https://YogAFton.com

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