This week we sit down with Kelly Sims, a Navy veteran, CPA, and one of the OG Bikram yoga practitioners who's been showing up on the mat since around 2000—back when the rooms were hotter, the discipline was stricter, and people wore Speedos unironically.

Kelly came to yoga the way a lot of people do: something was broken. In her case, it was her knee. She was a runner who loved the high, loved the hills, loved the whole thing—until her knee started crunching going up stairs. Physical therapy wasn't cutting it, so a coworker at BJC said the magic words: "You need to come to hot yoga." No instructions. No guidance on what to wear. Just "come."

So Kelly showed up in cotton jogging pants and a t-shirt. In a 105-degree room. With people screaming at her to lock her knees and open her eyes. And somehow, she fell in love with it.

What follows is one of the most entertaining yoga origin stories we've heard. Kelly practiced Bikram for over a decade—through the strict era when teachers would clap at you, when you couldn't leave the room, when they'd pack bodies so close together you could touch someone's back on either side with your arms extended. She watched yoga competitions happen (yes, with judges and winners), saved a man from hitting the floor when he passed out mid-class (he was getting a pacemaker installed on Monday, because apparently his wife thought Bikram was a good pre-surgery activity), and once threw up so violently after eating a Whole Foods salad that she "painted the wall" on her way out of dancer pose.

But this episode isn't just about wild Bikram stories.

Kelly and Roxanne met as student and teacher at Yoga Six and quickly discovered they're basically the same person—same sense of dark humor, same coping mechanisms, same life outlook. They even left their marriages on the exact same day without knowing it. That coincidence turned a yoga friendship into something more like sisterhood.

We get into Kelly's time in the Navy, including a night in a Tijuana jail after a brawl that started with something called "poppers" (not what you're thinking—it's where they pour alcohol down your throat and shake your whole body). We discuss her two other arrests, including one in St. Louis for a warrant she didn't know she had, where she got her first Hot Pocket and a Capri Sun while waiting to be bailed out.

Kelly talks honestly about what it's like to be a Black woman walking into predominantly white yoga spaces—and why she makes a point to welcome other Black students when she sees them. She's also refreshingly honest about not always noticing because she's been "the odd one out" her whole life and has learned to just exist in her own world.

The conversation touches on everything from whether yoga people have superior immune systems (Kelly's theory: all that shared sweat builds antibodies), to the absurdity of COVID protocols in yoga studios, to why Kelly can't skip yoga during tax season without wanting to "yell at people." Yoga, she says, is what keeps her kind during the most stressful months of the year. It's not about flexibility or achieving perfect poses—it's about perspective, grounding, and staying human when the IRS is breathing down your clients' necks.

We also bond over the real reason Kelly prefers 6 AM classes: so she can drink as much coffee as she wants afterward.

This is a conversation between friends—messy, tangential, punctuated by inside jokes and genuine affection. It's also a window into what 25 years of consistent yoga practice actually looks like: not perfection, not enlightenment, just showing up, staying mobile, sleeping better, and occasionally catching strangers before they hit the floor.

If you've ever felt like mainstream yoga culture wasn't made for you, Kelly Sims is proof that it doesn't have to be. You can curse on the way into the parking lot, flip someone off, walk into class, and become friends with them by the time you leave. That's the real yoga.

Anna Welsh has lived about nine yoga lives. She started as a high school basketball player who got dragged to her first Bikram class by her mom and thought she was witnessing a cult—sweaty adults in various states of undress, doing synchronized breathing on disgusting carpet, doors locked so nobody could escape. She didn't touch yoga again for a year. Classic origin story.

Fast forward through a college breakup (the gateway drug to yoga for so many of us), a 200-hour training, a 500-hour with the legendary Jen Jones, and Anna found herself moving to Lima, Ohio for a relationship. Lima, Ohio—where the nearest Target was two hours away. She makes it very clear she will never again live somewhere without a Target. Noted.

But here's where it gets interesting. With no yoga studios and no infrastructure, Anna got creative. She worked at a cupcake shop. She prepped jackfruit in the middle of soybean fields for a vegan food truck. And she handed out her yoga business cards with every taco she served at the AutoZone parking lot—eventually teaching a class right there in the lot for the AutoZone guys. She got paid in hot peppers by a line cook named Fritz. She worked one-on-one with a woman whose only goal was to walk down the church aisle for communion without falling over. They started with toe lifts while holding a chair.

This is the yoga they don't show you on Instagram.

When that relationship imploded (her dog Lobo was the wake-up call—long story), Anna came back to St. Louis and hit the ground running. At her peak, she was teaching 25 to 30 classes a week at nine different locations, from Illinois to South City. No days off. Running on fumes and passion and probably not enough White Castle. And then the universe intervened in the most dramatic way possible: she slipped on ice on the way to teach a retreat in Costa Rica, her foot got wedged under a truck tire, and she broke her leg in four places.

She asked the ER doctor if she could still make her flight. He thought she was joking. She was not.

Ten weeks non-weight-bearing, no health insurance, and a $50,000 surgery later (shout out to Dr. Christopher Mudd for charging her $1,500 because he's a good human), Anna had to reckon with what wasn't working. The pace. The hustle. The fact that yoga teachers can't actually make a living teaching yoga unless they're running themselves into the ground—or into a truck tire.

We get into all of it: why studio economics are broken, why teacher trainings and retreats exist mostly to keep studios afloat, why the rate of pay hasn't caught up with inflation, and why Anna was one of the lucky ones who could take unpaid gigs because she had a partner supporting her at the time. Most teachers don't have that. Most teachers are choosing between rent and doing what they love.

Anna's not teaching in studios anymore. She pivoted to medical device sales—she now works in surgeries helping teams use equipment for wound debridement and grafting. And here's the thing: she says her yoga teacher training prepared her perfectly for it. Reading a room. Communicating clearly. Helping people work together. She's still teaching, just not asanas.

But she's got the itch. And by the end of this episode, Roxanne and Anna are half-seriously, half-not-seriously talking about opening a studio together. We'll keep you posted.

Other things we cover: the real history of downward dog (it comes from Indian wrestling, not ancient yoga texts—thank you Mark Singleton), why there are no standing poses in the original yoga sutras, what it's like to teach blindfolded yoga using peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as a training exercise, the ethics of addressing a wardrobe malfunction mid-class, Gary's TSA "jacket off" prank, and our pitch for a yoga studio on a blimp.

Anna's favorite curse word will get her in trouble with HR, Roxanne's is "sugar snappers," and we learn the origin of "jabroni" (it's from Italian-American slang for "big ham" and was popularized by The Rock in the 90s.

New yoga teacher Nichole Carpenter joins Gary and Roxanne to talk about what teacher training doesn't prepare you for: standing in front of a room, blanking out, and learning to be okay with not being perfect.

This is a real conversation about the first year of teaching yoga—the nerves, the imposter syndrome, the obsession with class numbers, and why "sucking" might actually be the best thing that can happen to you.

🎧 Listen on Spotify: [LINK]🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts: [LINK]🌐 Website: https://theunqualifiedyogi.com/

TIMESTAMPS:

0:00 - Intro0:54 - Still haven't been canceled (yet)1:28 - Meet Nichole Carpenter2:00 - The nerves of doing a podcast (and teaching yoga)2:48 - Imposter syndrome and trying to be someone you're not3:54 - "Christopher Nolan imposter syndrome" - being the imposter of yourself4:19 - Gary can't listen to his own voice5:30 - Is your "teacher self" really you?10:45 - Nichole's journey into yoga teaching18:58 - "Sucking is okay because it gives you opportunity for growth"19:59 - Why failing teaches you more than succeeding20:48 - "I've been teaching 10 years and still have classes that suck"21:25 - Nichole's dharma talk that made Roxanne cry22:13 - The intense high (and crash) after your first classes23:05 - When your own teacher shows up to your class25:08 - Roxanne's confession: crying while teaching from nerves25:42 - "You just have to do the hard thing"26:15 - What Nichole's gotten better at: pacing and timing27:25 - Being "consistently inconsistent" as teachers and humans28:18 - The obsession with class numbers29:01 - The universe sends you students who are like you

CONNECT WITH US:Instagram: @theunqualifiedyogiWebsite: https://theunqualifiedyogi.com/

#yoga #yogateacher #yogapodcast #newteacher #impostersyndrome #wellness #authenticity #podcast