Indu Arora at the 2019 Tula Software Minneapolis Yoga Conference

This post is a part of a series introducing the presenters of our 2019 yoga conference, (March 22-24, 2019) sharing more about them, our own perspective and intentions for their involvement, and how their unique offerings contribute to the larger conference experience.

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Professional Bio

Indu Arora, Ayurveda and Yoga Therapist considers herself a student for lifetime. She has been sharing about Yoga philosophy, Yoga Therapy and Ayurveda since 1999. She is inspired by and taught under  Kriya Yoga, Himalayan Yoga, Kashmir Shivaism and Sivananda Yoga lineages. She has studied both Yoga and Ayurveda in a traditional Guru paramapara setting.

Her teaching style is rooted in empowering and inspiring students to awaken the inner Guru. Her core philosophy is,  ‘Nothing has the greatest power to heal, but Self!”

Authored: Mudra: The Sacred Secret Yoga - Ancient Heritage, Tomorrow’s Vision (known as The little Red Book on Yoga) 

The first time I met Indu was ever briefly at the 2015 Minneapolis Yoga Conference. Indu was leading a discussion, with a book signing following, for her book Mudra: The Sacred Secret. Tula was there as a sponsor for the first time and I was getting my first introduction to the world of yoga conferences.

As time has gone on, I’ve had the opportunity to work with Indu across numerous conferences, and she’s been a willing collaborator for a variety of ideas, most recently at the opening ceremony of the conference last year, and this year designing the entire yoga therapy track.

I feel a genuine connection with Indu built on a mutual respect for one another, and not just an acceptance, but an embracement, of the different views we hold, and the different places from which we come.

At the 2019 conference Indu has designed the entire Yoga Therapy track, and is herself leading a 4 hour intensive on Friday, along with two individual 2-hour workshops. We are thrilled with the deep level of involvement Indu has at the conference and are thrilled we once again have the opportunity to work together.

You can learn even more about the workshops Indu will be teaching at the 2019 Tula Software Minneapolis Yoga Conference, along with dozens of other presenters bringing hundreds of workshop hours, at https://tulasoftware.com/myc2019. Join us at The Most Comprehensive Yoga Conference in the Nation, March 22-24, 2019.

Kristi Taylor at the 2019 Tula Software Minneapolis Yoga Conference

This post is a part of a series introducing the presenters of our 2019 yoga conference, (March 22-24, 2019) sharing more about them, our own perspective and intentions for their involvement, and how their unique offerings contribute to the larger conference experience.

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Professional Bio

Kristi Taylor is an International Presenter, Co-Founder & Co-Owner Global Body Health, Thai Massage Therapist, Speaker, Certified AcroYoga and Certified Baptiste Power Yoga Instructor. An exceptional teacher who actively transforms fear into joy through her exquisite instruction, her extraordinary ability to empower others and transform lives by creating trust, connection and community where we learn together, play together and see where once there was fear, there now is possibility...and joy...

"In my work with Kristi there have been things in both Yoga and AcroYoga that I feared doing, because they seemed so difficult. Kristi always, simply, said, "You can do it. You will do it." I knew she really believed that but I still didn't. Until, with her help, my thought changed from I can't do that to I can't believe I'm doing this!" - Michael McGlone

Few people bring a level of support and enthusiasm to working with our company the way Kristi does, and I consider her a generous and important collaborator and co-creator.

Kristi is always willing to experiment with workshop ideas, collaborate with other presenters, and is constantly mindful about how her offerings fit in with the larger conference experience. She has an extraordinary depth to her teaching while also being approachable, kind, fun and enthusiastic.

At the 2019 conference Kristi is partnering with Faith Hunter to create a custom 4.5 hour Saturday intensive, is teaching an additional two hour workshop, and is also going to lead us in the closing ceremony, the final event of the conference.

Kristi is a dynamic personality who brings her whole self to her work and cares deeply about the students in her class, and the experience they have in her workshops.

Come see Kristi and dozens of other world class presenters at the 2019 Tula Software Minneapolis Yoga Conference!

You can learn even more about the workshops Kristi will be teaching at the 2019 Tula Software Minneapolis Yoga Conference, along with dozens of other presenters bringing hundreds of workshop hours, at https://tulasoftware.com/myc2019. Join us at The Most Comprehensive Yoga Conference in the Nation, March 22-24, 2019.

Faith Hunter at the 2019 Tula Software Minneapolis Yoga Conference

This post is a part of a series introducing the presenters of our 2019 yoga conference, (March 22-24, 2019) sharing more about them, our own perspective and intentions for their involvement, and how their unique offerings contribute to the larger conference experience.

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I am a (very!) big fan of Faith Hunter’s and we’re fortunate and grateful she’s chosen to work with us as much as she has. Faith has taught at the conference every year since we began producing it and also presented at the MYC in 2015, the first year Tula was a sponsor.

She owns a yoga studio in Washington, D.C., travels internationally teaching workshops around the world, has a large social media presence and has even taught yoga on the White House lawn. As an entrepreneur I admire what she’s cultivated and I appreciate how easy and professional she is to work with.

At the 2019 conference Faith will be leading the opening ceremony which she’s titled “We are love”. On Saturday, she’s collaborating with Kristi Taylor to co-present a special 4.5 hour Saturday morning intensive. The idea behind it is that within the conference, they’ll carve out some specific space for a group of people to connect a little more deeply than the two hour workshops allow. We haven’t done intensives on Saturday before, and I’m excited to see how this turns out. This is another great thing about working with Faith: her openness and willingness to collaborate, experiment, and see what happens. Very lastly, Faith will be teaching a two hour workshop on Sunday all about Awakening your Chakras.

As you can see Faith is once again a big part of the conference offering, and we’re thrilled about everything she’s going to bring. We hope to see you there!

Professional Bio

Faith Hunter ~ International yoga and meditation instructor, wellness philanthropist, movement motivator, healing guide, music head, and Spiritually Fly theorist.

Meet Faith Hunter, DC/NYC based Yoga instructor, global traveler, & Lifestylist, sprinkled with a dash of Louisiana charm. Faith began her life long love affair with yoga in the early 90s as a way to cope as her beloved brother Michael was dying from a complication related to AIDS. Through meditation and mindfulness Faith was able to release her fears and experience an awakening from within. From that day forward, she committed herself to sharing these practices with the world. Always eager to learn, explore, and share, Faith is an inspiring and generous mentor to yoga practitioners of all skill levels.

You can learn even more about the workshops Faith will be teaching at the 2019 Tula Software Minneapolis Yoga Conference, along with dozens of other presenters bringing hundreds of workshop hours, at https://tulasoftware.com/myc2019. Join us at The Most Comprehensive Yoga Conference in the Nation, March 22-24, 2019.

Matthew Sanford at the 2019 Tula Software Minneapolis Yoga Conference

This post is a part of a series introducing the presenters of our 2019 yoga conference, (March 22-24, 2019) sharing more about them, our own perspective and intentions for their involvement, and how their unique offerings contribute to the larger conference experience.

Professional Bio

Matthew Sanford is an expert in the process transformation through the healing power of yoga. Paralyzed from the chest down at age thirteen and beginning yoga at age twenty-five, Matthew knows firsthand the transformative effect that yoga can have on the mind-body relationship and how it can transform trauma, loss, disability. He is an internationally recognized yoga teacher, a sought-after public speaker. He is the author of the critically acclaimed WAKING: A MEMOIR OF TRAUMA AND TRANSCENDENCE (Rodale: 2006).

Matthew is a leader in the accessible yoga movement and has also emerged as a leading voice in the integrated health movement. He won the 2010 Pioneer of Integrative Medicine Award from the California Pacific Medical Center’s Institute of Health and Healing. Previous recipients include Dr. Deepok Chopra, Dr. Dean Ornish, and Dr. Mehmet Oz.

The most important design element for our yoga conference is that it is open and welcoming for everyone in the yoga community. It must be a conference that embraces everyone, has offerings for everyone, and importantly, helps professional yoga instructors teach in more inclusive ways. In every way Matthew helps make the conference better than it would be without his presence, and I’m deeply humbled to have the opportunity to work with him.

From my personal perspective on what I see, for as much as accessibility seems to be a part of the foundation of Matthew’s offerings, it also seems to only scratch the surface of what he brings in his teachings. Watch any number of the videos of him that you can easily find on google (my favorite is Jessa Walters, one of the original conference co-founders interviewing him) and you start to understand that he’s had very real discoveries and insights most people have not, and he shares these insights in a unique and amazing way. Really, you should take a few minutes to check out some of the linked videos above.

Matthew has previously presented at the Minneapolis Yoga Conference, although this is the first time he’s presented since our acquisition of it in 2016, and I’m simply thrilled that he’s returning this year.

You can learn more about the workshops Matthew will be teaching at the 2019 Tula Software Minneapolis Yoga Conference, along with dozens of other presenters bringing hundreds of workshop hours, at https://tulasoftware.com/myc2019. Join us at The Most Comprehensive Yoga Conference in the Nation, March 22-24, 2019.

Antiviral: The Tula Software Marketing Strategy of Investing in the Community we Serve and Expanding our Own Platform

A few years ago, as we watched the cost of pay-per-click campaigns begin to soar on sites like Google, Capterra and other “pay for placement” services, and as we read more and more stories about the news industry being wrecked by Facebook’s expansion and control of the Newsfeed, Tula Software began a deliberate marketing strategy to differently allocate our capital. This strategy would, we believed, allow us to allocate capital within the yoga community, while also allowing us to promote our software more effectively.

Our worldview is that doing anything extraordinarily well takes a significant amount of time, attention, effort and care. We began to see clearly the very real costs - in employee time, mental bandwidth, creativity, and financial - of creating a world class social media presence.

To truly be a different sort of software company, we needed to do things differently on the marketing front as well. First, our product needed to be excellent. We’ve always been a product company first, and so investing in our product for the benefit of our customers has always been our top priority. But as we’ve grown and have been able to allocate more money towards marketing and advertising, we’ve made very real and deliberate trade-offs to invest less of our money on advertising platforms, and more money directly into the yoga community.

Instead of buying Google ads, we’d sponsor yoga conferences. Instead of spending time curating the perfect Facebook page, we’d do things like help Living Beyond Breast Cancer and others with fundraisers. Instead of spending our time posting pictures on Instagram, we’d make ourselves available for one on one phone calls with our customers and those thinking of joining the Tula Family. This strategy of investing more in the community we serve and less with Google, Facebook, Twitter and Capterra, culminated in our acquisition of the Minneapolis Yoga Conference in 2016, a conference owned by two local Yoga Instructors and Entrepreneurs.

Over the past three years, this strategy has resulted in us investing well over $150,000, and thousands of hours of labor, directly into the yoga and overall wellness community, along with other countless small businesses. We’re proud of this, even if it has led to a subpar Facebook and Instagram page.

There are people we speak with sometimes who mean well, but misunderstand our deliberate tradeoffs, who think we should allocate more of our company’s resources to platforms controlled by Marc Zuckerberg. The problem is, they misunderstand that this would require us to do this INSTEAD OF platforms controlled by us, which we believe will ultimately be to the greater benefit of us individually, as well as at least some portion of the yoga community.

Certainly an argument can be made that maybe we’ve overcorrected, but I’d offer than any amount of time or money we allocate to our social media presence right now takes away from either our product, or our conference. There are always trade-offs.

We can’t do it all and we can’t do it all well. What we can do well is make the best software in the world for independent yoga studios, and we can produce the most comprehensive yoga conference in the nation.

We hope that’s enough, even in the absence of the perfect social media presence!

And speaking of our conference, have you seen we launched our full presenter lineup and schedule of events for the 2019 Tula Software Minneapolis Yoga Conference? Check it out!