My name is: Selena Maisonpierre.
My stomping ground is: Fort Greene, Brooklyn!
I’m known for being: A radiance coach and yoga teacher, who’s upbeat and insightful.
I'm talking about: Yoga! And coaching. Because both lead to the same end goal: balance and connection.
You can find it at: Sky Ting Yoga on Tuesday nights 6:30pm and Alo Yoga in Soho at 10am. I also teach in-home and virtual privates.
Before I started this work, I was: Fresh out of college, I moved to NYC and began my dream career in advertising. I very quickly felt suffocated in an office setting. After a year and a half, I quit my job (at a great company with super smart people) to backpack around South America. After returning, I still felt lost. I got a job at a media startup and had the same feeling—like I couldn’t breathe. I began working odd jobs—hospitality, sales—I even went back to that ad agency for a few months, but it all just felt so wrong. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me!
My interest was sparked when: I couldn’t shake this dream of becoming a yoga teacher. The lifestyle of the yoga teachers I looked up to just seemed to embody everything I desired: ease, freedom of time, flexibility of schedule, travel and so much creativity in teaching. I think I had a secret teacher within me that I had never acknowledged in pursuit of my marketing career.
After six-plus years teaching yoga, I saw a disconnect between how people showed up on the yoga mat and how they showed up in their everyday life. They showed up to yoga like another thing on their to-do list, a “check mark,” but weren’t really embodying balance in the rest of their life. I launched my coaching practice to bridge that gap, braiding body work and the principles of yoga with thought work to help people feel balanced and ignite their radiance in a truly integrated way.
What inspired me to create it was: I knew I could really help people! I knew I had a gift for facilitating and holding space for people, whether in a yoga class, a training, a retreat or a one-on-one coaching session.
I had done so much work on finding balance in my own life—from recovering from disordered eating in my teens and early twenties; letting go of rigid, punishment-based exercise and instead learning to be in my body and love moving it (yoga and dance); to ease up on my perfectionism and self-criticism that caused so much resistance in my life and instead embrace ease and acceptance with myself; even to navigate toxic relationships and know when it’s time to learn and when it’s time to leave.
All of my own experiences have inspired and allowed me to hold strong—and truly holistic—space for the people I work with, to help them get out of their heads and into their bodies and to integrate more balance and mindfulness into their lives.
The idea behind what I do is: Balance, integration, ease and joy—in everything! From the yoga mat to the boardroom to the bedroom.
What makes it different is: The yoga, coaching and health and wellness industries can become so extreme. I’ve seen teachers and methods that are super specific with rules and rigid approaches that seem almost cultish, harmful to your body and polarizing. Diets, fitness routines, even self-care resources—so many of the approaches feel so extreme.
My approach is centered around integration and flexibility. My goal is to ignite the radiance within you, not get you to follow my formula, and to give you the tools to always be able to bring yourself back into balance. To come home to yourself in a loving and aligned way.
One thing you can’t miss is: A yoga private! It’s such a special experience and a real gift to yourself, with so much insight, information and connection between you and another human (me). It will change how you walk into your next group class.
My favorite secret detail is: The experience of getting out of your head and being in your body.
I started practicing yoga when I was 17 and, for the first few years, I was going through the poses, feeling good in the stretches, but still in my head. Wondering what I looked like, if I was doing it right, what other people looked like—but once I started being in my body, everything else in my life changed.
That’s my favorite secret detail about yoga: witnessing people really experience being in their bodies and reconnecting and trusting the information that their bodies tell them.
It’s life-changing.
What it means to find balance is: Finding balance is a way of moving through life with curiosity. Balance looks different for everybody and will shift and recalibrate throughout your life as you grow, change and meet with new challenges and opportunities. Always stay curious!
What makes balance so important is: It grounds you between extremes, it puts you in relationship with your own body and mind and is a safe place for you to come home to, wherever you are.