My path with yoga started in 2016, when I was a 23 year old people-leader struggling to find her footing in a male dominated industry. I had moved over 8x in under 4 years as a discharged veteran, college graduate, and newly employed technical manager. I knew I had things on the right track in life—a stable, well-paying job, a respectable reputation, a home I owned all on my own, and even a new puppy. However, I couldn’t figure out why I felt so hollow—so unsatisfied, when left to my own thoughts late at night.

At the urging of a close friend, I started Turning Strawberry in 2017 as a blog to help me channel my thoughts. With aspirations of someday starting a non-profit, Turning Strawberry was a one-sided letter-to-self that would hopefully help someone to feel a little less alone if they were going through something similar. I was too young for a mid-life crisis, but I certainly wasn’t holding up very well deep inside, and I didn’t know why.

Since then, Turning Strawberry has ebbed and flowed. It went from a semi-anonymous platform where I wrote notes about surviving life in industry, to being discovered (and therefore abandoned) for fear of judgement and retaliation. When my health went belly-up in 2021, Turning Strawberry was the umbrella I came back under when I launched my first spiritual health and wellness campaign, Soul Star Unlocked, in 2022.

The principle of Turning Strawberry is this—growth is an iterative process. It’s a cycle of life and death that we’re meant to travel along. It’s both painful and beautiful, it involves dead-heading and pruning the bulbs that needlessly leech energy from our core, in order to channel more energy to the things we want to see grow. And then, at the end, it’s supposed to die. We’re supposed to let go and release to make room for the next thing to come—whether it’s an evolved version of our last crop, or clearing the field to make room for something new altogether.

It is with this philosophy that I’ve coached, mentored, and directly impacted scores of clients and students over the last 2 years. Some have employed this wisdom in their own life and have grown to new heights. Others have implemented the same efforts and have not been as successful. Of course, I want all of my students to succeed; I needed to understand why.

As we enter 2024—as I have gone back to industry and utilized all the tools and methods developed through formal education and trial-and-error, Turning Strawberry has evolved beyond it’s initial teachings. It has focused to pinpointing the one critical factor that makes all the difference in how well any of these overarching lessons stick—the one determining factor between success and struggle—it is focused on how well you are grounded.

It is with these lessons-learned and these teachings that Turning Strawberry, itself, has grown into something more. Focused on building and repairing the foundation in body, mind, and spirit, we cultivate a healthy muladhara, a connection to Earth, and to employing protective measures for when things inevitably go wrong. Grounded Yoga & Nutrition is here to serve you when you feel like you’ve tried your hardest and things still aren’t going right; when you feel like you’ve done the things, it’s still not working, and you don’t know why.

I’ve built this community for people like us; for us to feel safe, to release, and to heal. It is a place for us to connect, to learn, and to continue to grow with unwavering support. Thank you, for being here, and for your trust. It is by being Grounded, that we can align, attune, and ascend, in body, mind, and spirit, and I am here to guide you along the way.

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xo Andy
Founder, Head Coach & Mentor