and life you love. And today is a very special day because I get to introduce you to someone

who’s been a teacher and a mentor in my life. Colleen Saidman Yee is an internationally

respected yoga teacher who has been teaching since 1998. Before that she was a top fashion

model with Elite and Ford and also lived in Calcutta working with Mother Teresa. She’s

the founder of Yoga Shanti in Sag Harbor and, along with her husband Rodney Yee, other studios

in West Hampton and New York City. Colleen has been featured in Vanity Fair, Yoga Journal,

New York Magazine, Oprah, Marie Claire, and in Allure. In her new book, Yoga for Life,

we learn about how she went from a rebellious young woman with a heroin habit to a globe-trotting

fashion model to, as the New York Times calls her, the first lady of yoga. Colleen, thank

you so much for being here.

It is my honor.

Oh, it’s my honor. So if you guys don't know, Colleen has been my yoga teacher for

almost 10 years now. Started taking class with you back in 2006 and, I have to tell

you, before I started practicing with you and then with you and Rodney, I liked yoga

but it wasn’t anything that I felt so drawn to, and you have been such a great teacher

in my life. Like, every summer when I come out to practice with you it’s like you help

bring me back to myself, and thank you for that. And I wanted to congratulate you. So,

Colleen, Yoga for Life. I read this book cover to cover. Brilliant, brilliant job.

Thank you.

It’s wonderful. And something struck me that you said right in the beginning. You

start off the book saying, “Know you’re enough.” And you write, “I watch women

holding it together afraid that if they slow down everything will fall apart. I watch women

being ashamed that they’re aging and feeling unworthy of love. Women in my classes coping

with addiction and body and relationship issues, mother issues, competitive issues, and an

inability to tell the truth.” I read that and my heart simultaneously broke, because

I saw myself in it, and it opened up because it was such a sense of relief. When I read

the book I got the sense that you too are on this journey. How have you experienced

this idea of you’re enough? Knowing you’re enough? How does that make sense in your life

now?

So interesting, Marie. The first time I heard that phrase was actually a month into writing

the book and I’m like, “Who am I to write a book? I didn't even graduate college, for

heaven’s sakes.” And my agent was like, “Just every day sit down and write for an

hour, just any story you can think of.” So I’m like, “Alright.” We were in Paris,

London, Morocco, teaching around the globe. So I was doing that and I was hitting a wall

and music is my inspiration, always has been, always... especially lyrics. So I started

listening to this Jason Isbell song and the lyric was, “Cover me up and know you’re

enough.” And I was just like, “Yes. Yes, we’re enough. I’ve been running for my

whole life.” You know, covering up or running or trying to show the world something that

I wasn’t for fear that I wasn’t enough. And it just, like you said, it broke something

open in me and I thought, “You know what? I can do this. I have stories to tell.”

And they’re everybody’s stories. Mine in some ways may be more dramatic or in some

cases less dramatic, but to have people know, A, they’re not alone and, B, they are enough.

And if we could break the armor at the very first line of my book it says that if one

woman would stand up and tell her story, the whole universe would break open. It’s just

like, yes. Tear the armor, show the world who you are, and give other women confidence

to do the same thing. Funny, I was scouring the internet one night when I was having a

hard time sleeping and watching YouTube videos and there’s this video of Fiona Apple, and

I was mesmerized. She was dancing and singing and it was really jerky. Like, it wasn’t

beautiful, it wasn’t graceful, but something in her touched me so deeply. It was like this

woman is wounded and she is not afraid to show that. I felt like it was like this beautiful

namaste, right? From my heart to yours. Here I am. I’m dancing. My dance may have a limp,

but the dance with the limp is almost more beautiful than a dance without a limp.

There’s... that’s what I get, that’s why I come back to your class and your work

again and again, because I constantly feel that okayness in my own self. Now, you’ve

been teaching for almost 20 years now? Yoga. When you were first getting your training

at  Jivamukti, you have a story in the book about the fact that you were so into this

training, yoga was such a huge breakthrough in your own life, all the other things that

you went through, and you walked in and you said, you know, “I just wanna do this for

my own personal development and my own practice. I don't wanna teach.” Tell us about that.

It was about two thirds of the way through the training and I just had this realization

of, “Oh, I’m not gonna do this. I am not going to get up in front of people and teach

yoga. That’s... I can’t. I’m not going to and I need to let Sharon and David know

that now.”

And what were the reasons?

Well, I walked into their office and it was... it was literally almost like they expected

me. They’re sitting there and I’m going through my list of reasons why I just want

to let you know now that I have no intention of being a yoga teacher and these are the

reasons. I’m shy, I am not the one to get up in front of the classroom and speak my

truth or chant, because I am also tone deaf, so that’s just not gonna work here. And

I also have epilepsy, and you never know when a seizure is gonna come on. And can you imagine

how mortified I would be and traumatized the classroom would be? So I told them all and

they listened and they were very gracious and graceful. And so I left and about an hour

later I get a phone call. It was Sharon. Sharon Gannon, my... my teacher, my mentor. And she

said, “Hello Colleen, this is Sharon.” “Yeah, hello?” She said, “You’re teaching

my 6:15 class tonight. It’s already sold out and I’ll be taking the class.”

Forget about it. That’s insane. And what did you feel in that moment?

Horrified. Terrified. Just sweating. Like, just blind almost. You know those moments

when you actually can’t see, hear, think, feel? So I... it was three and a half hours

of prep and I went home and I memorized every single word. I still remember the sequence

to this day that I taught. I memorized every single word. I think it’s the most nervous

I have ever been. But I got up there, I remember Sharon was in the back right corner, I remember

exactly what she was wearing, it was just so surreal. So I taught the class and I walked

outta there high as a kite. It was just so... for some reason I don't love the word empowering,

but it’s the only word that comes to me right now is it was just so... I was like,

“If I can do this, there’s a lot more possibilities in life that could open up.”

Because I’ve... I’d put myself in such a shell as a fashion model for so many years

and being exonerated for my external appearance that my internal life had gotten pretty dilapidated.

So to be able to stand up there in front of 75 people including one of the women that

I respect most in the world and teach a class and walk out and feel like I did a pretty

good job for my first class, it was... and I’ve had a lot of unnatural highs in my

life and this one was just... just amazing. Buzzing from head to toe.

So did you really believe when you walked in that room that you would never teach?

Absol... I knew I would never... it wasn’t even a belief, it was solid. It was fact.

I was never gonna teach.

Isn’t that so incredible that another woman standing up, seeing something in you beyond

what you could see in yourself at that point and then now I have the benefit and thousands

and tens of thousands and millions of people have the benefit of your teaching. That is

really, really...

Thank you.

...incredible.

Yeah, she threw me off the cliff.

Yeah.

And she knew she had to do it right away or I was gonna turn and run.

Yeah. And that for me in my life too, so many times if I’ve been thrown in the fire is

when I discover my strength and it’s those people that are willing to push me off the

ledge that do it, it’s amazing. One of the other questions that I had was around your

experience with Mother Teresa, and it so warmed my heart that you were writing these letters

to her since you were a little girl and then 17 years later a letter came back. Can you

tell us about that?

Yeah. I read an article in Life magazine, do you remember Life magazine?

Yes.

Way back when. And it was pictures of Mother Teresa serving the poorest of the poor. And

I was, I’m guessing, 11 or 12 at the time and I have 5 brothers and was feeling very

overwhelmed and I was like, “Ok, this is the answer.” Looking at her, looking at

the peace and the love, and I was deep into Catholicism as a child as well. And so I just

wrote her letters and I told her all of my problems and I said, “You might think I’m

joking because I’m young, but I really want to work with you.” At the time I thought

I was going to be a nun. I hadn’t had sex yet, so the nunnery was still an option for

me. And I didn't hear back, I didn't really expect to hear back, and then I’d write

a couple more times, 54 A Circular Drive Calcutta, India. And then, yeah, 17 years later an envelope

came from a woman named Sister Priscilla and it said, “You are ready to serve the poorest

of the poor.” And I’m like, “Woah.” And it had just come at a time that I had

just broken up from a 16, 17 year relationship, so it was perfect.

And when you got there, that experience of actually doing the work, what did that teach

you?

Concisely it taught me that the only way to peace is through service. And the nuns taught

that day in and day out. Mother Teresa has this beautiful saying, apparently it’s written

in her chambers, and it says that the fruit of silence is prayer, the fruit of prayer

is faith, the fruit of faith is love, the fruit of love is service, and the fruit of

service is peace. And it was just so beautiful. The whole time I was there I had two dresses

and I’d wash one out every night and then wear the other one. And, I mean, coming from

the fashion world where it was all about makeup and designer clothes and the best hair, I

wasn’t ever really as happy as I was in India. I’d shaved my head, I was wearing

these really quite ugly, I still have them, they’re hanging in my closet next to my

other Herve Leger and whatever else. But I just found out that I could be happy without

all of that extra stuff. I still love the extra stuff, don't get me wrong, but there

is a place deep inside that can be touched and it is peace and it comes through service,

and that was the main lesson... I mean, at one point when I was in India I was working

at this home called Prem Dom and it’s mainly for the mentally unstable. And I was given

the assignment to wash a man that had elephantitis of the testicles, which is quite a chore.

And I’m watching the nuns and could tell it was a test for me, and I realized that

I was bathing God. And whatever you want to call God, it became a privilege and an honor

and I felt peace.

The next piece in the book that really got me was about this idea of impermanence. And

there’s something that you wrote that, again, was another moment, I’m reading it, and

I felt myself wanting to cry. “What’s the use of working so hard? Everything is

transitory. My yoga studio won’t last, my students will die, I’ll die. Why bother

waking up every morning and teach yoga? Why bother loving when our loved ones will eventually

be taken away from us?” And you shared that you come back to the Mother Teresa quote,

“What you spend years creating someone could destroy overnight and create anyway.”

Yeah, but that’s the big yoga lesson, really. It’s everything that we put so much stock

in is transitory.

Yeah.

Right? It’s impermanent. And suffering comes from clinging on or pushing away the stuff

that’s just changing all around us. So what’s the point of doing anything then, if it’s

all changing? I mean, that’s like this big question.

I struggle with that. There’s sometimes if I’m pushing myself so hard and I’ll,

you know, crash in my bed and go, “What am I doing this for?” And that’s why this

passage moved me so much.

I think the answer to that is if you don't then you freaking sleep through this beautiful

life.

Yes.

All we have, like, all we have right now is this amazing moment between the two of us.

That’s what we have and that’s real and that’s now. Whereas if we’re thinking

about something that could happen tomorrow or something or some remorse from something,

we’re not awake, we’re not present, and then we end up, as Mary Oliver said, “What

are you gonna do with this one precious life of yours?”

Yeah.

And we do want to be awake for our life, we want to be present.

Yeah.

We don't want it to be a blur that we haven’t felt, seen, lived, touched, breathed, just

embraced and enveloped the moment whether it’s a moment of intense grief or beauty

or sadness or joy. It’s just... it’s the real stuff.

It is the real stuff and it is important. Every time I start to feel myself going to

that clinging, thinking about Josh or my family or planning for the days that inevitably you

know will come, and I come back to this work or come back on my mat on a class with you

and it feels like I get in touch with that peace, and that’s just so important.