22 Sep Indra’s Grace In The News: Meet Jenny Reitz

Our very own Jenny Reitz was recently featured in the online publication CanvasRebel talking about industry-wide U-turns, managing a team, and what matters in succeeding in your field. Read an excerpt below and click HERE to read the full article.

Meet Jenny Reitz

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jenny Reitz a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Jenny, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Have you ever experienced a times when your entire field felt like it was taking a U-Turn?

One of the biggest industry-wide U-turns I’ve ever witnessed was at the beginning of the pandemic when so many businesses – within the health and wellness industry and beyond – made the pivot to offering online services. Our well-established but exclusively in-person yoga studio made the big (and terrifying) pivot to offering classes online. It was something students had been asking for for years, but up until that point, we had just never gotten around to it. It wasn’t that we weren’t interested in offering online classes, rather, the idea of it was so intimidating that I never quite wrapped my head around it. Then, March of 2020 happened. The studio closed its doors for in-person classes on March 17 and on March 19, we were offering our first Zoom class.

It was terrifying in the beginning because I knew how many things could go wrong (with Zoom, with the internet, with user error). And, as the studio manager (and the one who coordinates anything relating to technology), I felt a huge weight of responsibility to get it right. It was almost as if, on some level, I could feel how much we all needed yoga at that time and I didn’t want to let anyone down. The class went off without a hitch. We had over 40 people attend our first online class. It was primitive as compared with how we operate today: no microphone, no audio system, no camera. Just a teacher and their laptop. The sound echoed, the video wasn’t perfect, but the yoga was exactly what everyone needed. No one cared that it wasn’t professionally produced or engineered. We were all just grateful to be in community again – even if it was virtual.

I attended many webinars and zoom meetings during that time on best practices for offering online classes, how to navigate the pandemic as someone running a business in the yoga industry, what others in the industry were doing – you name it, I attended it. My whole life began to revolve around Zoom meetings. During one of the presentations, someone mentioned that from a technology standpoint, we (in the health and wellness industry) catapulted forward the equivalent of five years in a matter of about two weeks. That blew my mind and serves as a testament to our strength and resilience as a people. If we can do this, we can do anything.

Keep reading