Finding balance through yoga in Boca Raton

Craig Richman leads a yoga class in Boca Raton.

By any measure, Craig Richman's life was out of control last August.

Overweight with a torn meniscus, the Boca Raton financial adviser could no longer run or swim to relax from his stressful business life. He saw everything as a competition and had borderline high blood pressure as a result. "Impact sports were out of the picture," he says.

Richman tried tai chi but didn't like it. He eventually found his balance through yoga.




When he tried hot yoga last September, "I spent much of the class in the child's pose," he says.

From that small beginning, he was talked into practicing yoga three times a week for a month, without judgment of whether he liked it or not. "It was the hardest thing I've ever done," he says. He started to lose weight and liked his improved mental outlook on life.

He especially enjoyed the time at the end of the class where everyone relaxed in the savasana pose. "This two minutes for me became a blissful state of nirvana with absolutely no worries," he wrote on his blog.

Richman doing a headstand.

Obsessed again

After about three months of practicing yoga, he became obsessed with it and couldn't wait to get back onto the mat. 

He found his way to Leslie Glickman of the Yoga Journey studio in Boca Raton. She had trained most of his yoga teachers, and she just moved into new studio in the Wyndham Boca Raton hotel. She was leary about allowing him into her yoga teacher training, he says, because he was so new to yoga and also had lost a significant amount of weight -- about 50 pounds. 

Plus, at age 56, he thinks he was the oldest student in the class. He begged, offered to let her keep the money if for any reason he had to drop out of the class, or she felt he was not up to task of being a yoga teacher.

She relented, and the rest is the new story of Craig Richman.

He now teaches Tuesday morning yoga (7 a.m.) at the Yoga Journey studio. After losing the weight, he has no lingering health issues and is on the road to inner peace.

Richman in Warrior II pose.

Favorite pose

His favorite position is the Warrior I. "It's a dynamic pose, your hands are reaching to the sky, but you never really there," he says because he likes the journey aspect of yoga.

He talks about his yoga teachers as friends and even created a short video for them at a tribute presentation in mid-July. He was able to combine some dance steps with yoga moves in the video because he once was the top disco dancer in the area in the late 1970s and early '80s. In the tribute video, he moves to the Stylistics and their Betcha by Golly Wow song.

Now, he is on a mission to convert other executives, stuck on the treadmill of careers to show them there is a better way -- through yoga.

And now, for my numbers

I had my best walking day last week on Thursday, July 25, 2013, when I walked:

Steps: 10,580

Miles: 5.3