It’s not a career path you hear about all that often.
Lawyer-turned-yoga teacher is about as natural as the Insiders opening a vineyard. Not exactly the transition you’d expect.
But for Jim Readey, the owner of the Yoga Center on South Main Street for the last decade, it was the right one. Between Boston College Law School, a year clerkship with then New Hampshire Supreme Court Justice David Souter and jobs at firms in Manchester and Concord, he had spent most of the 1980s and the early part of the next decade practicing law.
“Yoga is not a profession you get into to get rich, so I was doing it for the love of it,” said Readey.
Up to that point in his career, Readey had made a decent living. But he was also dealing with considerable neck pain. Maybe it was the long days at the office, the pressure to produce or a combination of both. Man, do we know how that feels.
“When I was practicing law, I felt like a prisoner in the life I chose,” said Readey. “I felt I had so much invested in it, I couldn’t leave it behind.”
So begrudgingly, he went to see a physical therapist. After six months and little results, he got a suggestion that changed his life. Like the-day-you’re-introduced-to-chocolate kind of life changing.
“At the very end, he said ‘look Jim, I can’t do anything more for you,’ ” Readey remembers. “So he said, ‘what you might want to look into is yoga.’ ”
In the early 1990s, yoga was not like it is today. There was just one class offered at the YMCA. Readey didn’t know much about it, but the lawyer in him made sure he found out more.
“I was desperate. I had tried everything else for my neck,” said Readey. “But I was a lawyer and I was skeptical. I remember making two phone calls to the teacher, peppering him with questions. I heard just enough that it would be worth a try.”
The class was seven weeks long, and just like most things in his life, Readey treated it as a competition. He wanted to do each stretch and each pose better than everyone else, including the teacher. But eventually, he saw the benefits of practicing yoga the right way. During one week near the end of the course, something changed within Readey.
“It was just feeling a release of everything I had bottled up for decades,” said Readey. “It felt so peaceful and sweet. It was such a liberating feeling.”
But it wasn’t an immediate transition. It was actually a trip to see what you’d equate to a life coach for lawyers that began the transformation. Because before Readey turned yoga from an exercise routine to a lifestyle, he actually tried his hand in the movies.
“I was losing my enthusiasm for the practice of law,” said Readey.
He spent time on two movies – one in Conway and the other on Nantucket. But what he found was a lot of down time on the sets, so he’d practice yoga. Soon others wanted to learn.
“I found myself teaching yoga, the little that I knew, and I enjoyed it,” said Readey.
Then one October evening in 1994, when Readey was talking with a co-worker on the Nantucket set, he made a decision.
“I said, ‘I think when I go home I’m going to apply for yoga teacher training at Kripalu,’ ” Ready remembered.
Within four months, he passed the certification class and began a journey that’s closing in on 20 years. But even when Readey made the switch, he never thought it would last. Seven years tops.
“I felt that was as long any career would last,” said Readey. “Nothing this fun could last forever, but that’s not true. It’s gotten more and more enjoyable. I stopped pinching myself after 10 years.”
Good thing, because that could really start hurting after a while.
It wasn’t easy in the beginning. For the first five years, Readey bounced around. He rented a space on South Main Street, taught at Peoples Fitness and for the Center for Health Promotions – an extension of Concord Hospital. There were also classes at Elliot Hospital in Manchester and two separate stints at the Yoga Center.
“I just wanted to teach and share what I knew,” said Readey. “I wanted to jump in with both feet and live the life.”
After a falling out with the center’s owner at the time, he was asked back by the next owner in 2000, the same one who convinced Readey to buy the business four years later. As far as Readey knows, it’s the oldest yoga facility in the city – going back 30 years.
“He said ‘you’re really the only one I can think of taking it over,’ ” said Readey.
But at first, the idea of owning a business had no appeal. He was happy just teaching and practicing yoga. Over the next seven months, Readey avoided the proposal.
“I didn’t want to do it,” said Readey. “You can say I took it over reluctantly or hesitantly.”
Eventually, though, it just felt right. It wouldn’t be like owning a bottom-line driven business. It would just allow Readey to do it his way.
“It would be my own space where I could nurture my own creativity and offer more and more yoga,” said Readey.
Now, Readey couldn’t see it any other way. He gets to teach the classes he wants, at any time he wants. He can rent the space to the teachers who align with his vision. He could even buy treats from New England Cupcakery on the first floor and eat them without anyone knowing any better.
Over the last seven years, Readey has immersed himself in the field of yoga nidra. It’s his passion for the lifestyle that has him constantly seeking more.
“It’s a form of meditation that’s clearly aligned with the yoga traditions,” he said. “It combines the best of western psychology and eastern philosophy.”
But it’s just one of the many variations of yoga offered at the center. There’s a wide range of options, from beginners to advanced, and group sessions to one-on-ones. There are also workshops, like Yoga & Improv collaboration on April 5 at 1 p.m. And the first class is always free. Readey wants you to enjoy it and come back. But not for his sake; rather for your own.
“Everything here is about experiential learning,” said Readey.
When Readey was filling out his law school applications, his stated goal was to empower people. He wanted to help others. But it wasn’t until yoga took over his life that it became a reality.
“There was something inside of me just dying to get out,” said Readey. “It’s something I love to do and want to do.”
So when Readey tells his story, he jokes at the time he heard yoga was supposed to be the next hot profession. And while he may not be getting rich, he sure is enjoying his life a lot more these days.
“I like to think I’m existing in a deeper level of consciousness and awareness than I was 20 years ago,” said Readey.
