Did this image from our Spring issue of Chelsey Gribbon and Jason Magness of Team Yogaslackers inspire you? Us too. Chelsey’s agreed to do regular blogs for us about her adventure life, but she wanted to start with an introduction and a tell-all about how she ended up perched atop her fiance in Utah’s Little Cottonwood Canyon. Thanks to Fullerton Images for the awesome shot.
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A few years ago, a good friend of mine sent me a card, at the end she wrote:
“Sit like a mountain, flow like the river, and shine like the sun.”
I liked it so much that I adopted those words as some sort of a personal mantra. I say it at the closing of the yoga classes that I teach. I have it pinned up by my door. It reminds me to fully embody the earth that we live in—to breath it, taste it, play in it, respect it, and learn from it.
A year and a half ago this quote was like a broken record in my mind. I was two days into the nursing program at Northern Arizona University – but I wasn’t really there. It felt like I was swimming against the current—not flowing like a river. Something from the deepest point of my being was screaming “NO!!!”
On the third day of school I walked into the dean’s office and left the program, knowing that my family wouldn’t be happy. They’d been so excited for me—their little vagabond child—to settle down. I had been wandering: a resident of seven states, traveling to exotic places, and raft guiding every summer. When I had been in school, I’d taken classes like yoga or mountain biking. But as soon as I’d really tried to settle down, I knew that for me something was missing.
I met my fiancé Jason at a yoga training. He was a teacher too, and also an avid adventurer. He’d done short stints as a firefighter, physicist, and math teacher before chucking it all to follow his exploratory longings. After our first few times hanging out—climbing, biking, running, and doing yoga, I knew that he was it. Our passions for playing and living a non-traditional lifestyle were identical. Every day was an adventure. I jumped in headfirst. Our second date was my first adventure race. We won!
When I came home after that second day of school and told Jason that I wanted to quit, he didn’t try to talk me out of it. We decided to put all of our energy and efforts into growing our little group known as the YogaSlackers. Jason had founded the group a few years earlier with the simple goal of exploring the human potential.
Now, a year and half later, YogaSlackers are teaching “Redefining Balance” retreats across the U.S. Teaching people how to incorporate yoga, acrobatics, slackline, climbing, and sustainability. Our adventure racing team has reached the top level of the sport: we’re ranked in the top 10 of the U.S., and we’re in the top 20 worldwide. We’ve even developed our own slackline brand and a series of instructional DVDs.
I’m still living out of the back of my car (it’s crowded with Jason in there too!) or on couches of friends. And truth be told, even if I ever do start making enough money to even think of a house—I think a yurt is more my style.
