The place we call Breathe Together Yoga opened its doors on New Year’s Eve 2010 as Breathe Los Gatos. Lama Ngawang, my Tibetan monk friend, flew in from Minnesota, prayed and blessed our studio, and over three days, constructed a mandala in the lobby completely from colored grains of sand. As a reminder of the reality of impermanence, several days later, it was destroyed, the sand was divided and spooned into tiny plastic packets and handed to our students.

The studio was – and is – beautiful. Rob, my business partner, and I had a similar aesthetic and we dreamed it into existence. We chose the stones on the shower floors, sustainable Ipe wood in Luna, New Mexico plaster for the lobby, and the Venetian plaster for Sola, our warm room, so the moist heat would be therapeutic for the body. We designed Sola’s fountain ourselves. We wanted everyone to feel welcome, so it reads Breathe in different languages.

The last time I wrote a story about the making of our studio was the first year we opened. In that article, I didn’t mention that Rob had a genetic disease, a liver that was secreting proteins into his kidneys that would require (at the very least) a kidney transplant, but, more effectively, a liver and kidney transplant. His mother and aunt had died from the disease. While I did share the information to some of our staff, I felt that, ultimately, it was his story to tell.

Although we created a business plan for what was then Breathe Los Gatos, we had absolutely no idea what was required to run the studio. We knew that we would put cancer support at the center of the model. Memberships would pay to support the vulnerable, people who had cancer or were immunocompromised, and the elderly. Civil servants would pay less. It would turn out to mean being open every day of the year but Christmas from before 6am until 9:30pm, having over 20 employees, primarily young women who would learn to greet whatever issue might arise with kindness and clear boundaries, as well as that we’d have close to forty strong, experienced teachers, very much their own human beings. We hadn’t anticipated hosting visiting teachers from around the world, nor did we account for the inevitable wear and tear on the building, not to mention the amount of time and energy involved in attending (to the very best of our abilities) to every student that enters the space, which, over the years, has amounted to tens of thousands of people.

While the studio was in development, Rob wanted his passion for tea represented. He envisioned people ordering tea from a selection of over sixty teas in the tea house. The tea would be traditionally served. Everyone would sit down and sip it slowly with an appreciation for the value of slowing down. But, when the tea house was being built, our initial architectural plans could not be executed. The county insisted upon three sinks, which would fundamentally alter the kitchen design, so, our tea house ended up resembling a bar. Rob did not like it. Looking for a bright side, I referred to the studio as the “Cheers” of Yoga (remember the show?). Days after opening, people asked for coffee to meet their fast lives. We bought an espresso machine.  

After the construction was said and done, Rob had contributed $850,000 to the build out. This was not in his plans either, but if you’ve built or remodeled anything, you know what happens. My contribution to our business relationship was that I had taught yoga and meditation in the area for ten years. The month before we opened, he notified me that there was no money left. We would have to have 300 members to pay the bills the first month. I considered it a miracle on the day of our opening when we counted the 300th member. They signed up without even ever seeing the place.

Our teacher-student relationship changed when we began to run a business. Neither Rob nor I anticipated it. I was so overwhelmed by the responsibilities of what was essentially a startup, while Rob’s health began to rapidly decline. He continued to work as a VP at a semiconductor company, while I ran the daily operations; eight months into opening, he had a tube inserted in his abdomen to make dialysis possible. Having intimately cared for Melissa (who was his wife) during her battle with breast cancer, he knew how to quietly manage his own daily dialysis. He also quietly re-prioritized. He often joked that he wanted to be like James Bond. And, I imagine that had James Bond faced his mortality, he would have also re-prioritized. Rob had always wanted to fly. The state of California does not allow people on dialysis to fly planes, but Rob discovered that there were no restrictions to flying gliders. So, he took lessons. He bought a glider. He spent many weekends flying above the clouds and the studio.   

Yoga studio ownership comes with challenges that would not seem obvious to those outside. Younger employees are learning how to manage their adult lives, sometimes students use yoga to manage mental or emotional instability, and many remember when Breathe was audited by the State of California, a battle we eventually won over two, albeit grueling, years. Several weeks after the win in 2015, we were approached by a legal firm representing a studio on the east coast called Breathe. The word “Breathe” was nationally trademarked and the studio was looking to expand. Our response: an audible sigh.

One of the last times I sat down with Rob was over a tea at a cafe in downtown San Jose. Our students had voted on the name change: Breathe Together. He did not love it, but if it was the only option, he would go with it. He was noticeably weak. And to receive a transplant, one must be healthy, and his numbers were not high enough to qualify. But, historically, after rough health episodes – like Bond – he would once again bounce back, as he did after that visit.

In the middle of summer in 2017, he texted me from the hospital. He had been sailing with great friends in New York, and upon his return had trouble with his feet. The doctors had removed toes, but they were not finished. He texted that he would spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. As I understood it, that night, a younger doctor had provided hope with a new surgical procedure that could potentially save his feet. He took the gamble and changed his medical course. But, his blood pressure dropped, and his heart stopped on the table after the operation. They resuscitated him. His longtime friend called me. I sat with him in the hospital that night. He was entirely dependent upon the machines. His mind was fine, but tubes in his mouth prevented words.

I said what I should have said when he was healthy. He fundamentally changed my life.

The numbers on the machine showed that his blood pressure was beginning to stabilize, and I remarked about it. He shook his head. He already knew he was not coming back. While his father and sister, surviving family members, were not there, his closest friends entered the room and gathered around. I believe that he had waited for them. Then, his blood pressure precipitously dropped. There was another encounter with resuscitation, but I like to think that this time he put his flight training to good use and that he was finally reunited with Melissa. Weeks later he was buried beside her, high up on a hill overlooking the San Francisco Bay.

Would you have loved Rob? He was smart, kind, polite, clever, funny, a musician, a great speaker, a true friend to many. He would have cared about you. And if you were sick, and particularly if you had cancer, you could spend time with others in a caring environment we now call BTY, attending to your body, breath, and mind because he was one who acted upon generosity.   

The irony of the whole thing was that I had so wanted him to be comfortable enough to come to the classes that he, in essence, created: the cancer and wellness classes for those with compromised immune systems. What I believe kept him from coming was James Bond. If we are honest with ourselves, we can probably understand this very human impulse. He had been so accustomed to being at the top of his class, an outstanding engineer, a man who solved problems. It can be difficult to change gears when we have grown fond of our identity.

Years later, I have a deeper appreciation for this impulse, as I notice how heavily identified I have become. Being a leader of a business while attempting to live one’s yoga, to the absolute best of my ability, which I have interpreted as meaning, like we often say, being steady, filled with ease, clear in thought, speech, and action. It means being compassionate and truthful in all situations. Is this possible? Those who have been around over the years know that the answer is unequivocally no. Now, particularly though, I am grateful to have had the opportunity, for several thousand days, to wake up, and try again. 

What Rob and I also had not anticipated was the relationships that would be formed out of this experiment. True friendships, true collegiality, yoga practitioners approaching life in earnest, people from all different ages, backgrounds, and countries, practicing together. People have fallen in love in BTY, gotten married, started families. Employees have become like family. The word often used is “Community.” The quality of relationships that we’ve formed are what I wish for the world.

Writing this now, during COVID-19, what have I learned that I would pass on? If you have something you want to say to someone, say it. Make a medical directive and a living trust. Be honest about your suffering. Say how you feel about the people in your lives before you can’t be sure if they truly understood you, work to understand those you care about who can be difficult to understand, appreciate deeply the people who come into your life and change it forever. Love each other. Forgive each other often. Forgive yourself often. And remember that “tomorrow” is ultimately a story that we tell ourselves. Yogis throughout the centuries have said that. What we have is now.

What comes with COVID-19 is the reality that businesses all over the world, including ours, are working day and night to not be in a position to breathe their last breath.So, today I write this short, comforting story about “tomorrow.” I see myself sitting down with a cup of pu-erh tea (Rob’s favorite) and you. Together, I want to look back at the time I wrote this, and appreciate what has become more obvious. Breathe Together was always as ephemeral as a sand mandala. Like you. Like me. We will sit down and remember the time when it looked like the studio would be swept away by a virus, and, like sand, all we would take with us were the experiences that had left an imprint in our minds and hearts. You and I would sit at our tea bar in the spirit of the bar in Cheers. We would slowly sip that tea, appreciating its subtle flavor, like Rob had always wanted, and we would breathe a sigh of relief. “It is a new chapter,” we will say to ourselves. We are here now. Let us not take anything or anyone for granted.