To celebrate International Women's day, we caught up with a number of Women within Digme....

 

Here, we catch up with our Head of Yoga Sarah..

 

1: Tell us a bit more about your role at Digme

Hey! I am the Head of Yoga at Digme and manage all things Yoga and Breathwork and from creating concepts, to hiring and managing teachers and scheduling, as well as teaching of course!

 

2: What gives you the most job satisfaction?
I love teaching Yoga. For me the energy and feeling of teaching a full house of Yogis, all breathing and moving together is electric. The connection is palpable, and when it flows you can tell that truly nothing else matters than the present moment. I also love seeing my community grow. Knowing you can make a positive impact in people’s day and life in general is so rewarding. When I see my teachers grow their communities too it makes me feel warm and fuzzy! Haha! The Yoga team at Digme is incredible and I want everyone to experience it too.

 

3: What has been the proudest moment of your career so far?
Wow tough question. Can I have four? Haha Digme reaching out and asking me to be Head of Yoga for one! Hosting and selling out my first ever Yoga retreats less than a year into teaching, lululemon asking me to be their ambassador and launching my first 200 Hour Teacher Training.

 

4: What were your ambitions growing up and did you see any barriers of getting where you wanted to be?
I knew I wanted to live abroad (I’m Irish!) and I knew I was willing to work hard to make my dreams come through. I ended up in Finance first because I guess I thought success and happiness were synonymous with money. However, after 10 years in the business I wasn’t happy! So I found what made me so and it was the world of Yoga.

 

5: What has been your experience of living through the pandemic?
Lockdown was tough for me, especially the first one where I was totally alone. Teaching really helped. Having that connection with my students through teaching live online classes really gave me energy and kept me going. It was also a time of personal growth. I was working through a loss of a loved one, so coping with that as well as the pandemic was so hard but also evidence of how much resilience we can have.

 

6: As a leader yourself, what leadership qualities do you feel are most important?
Managing people requires empathy, understanding and a desire to nurture people and see them grow and succeed. Communication is also very important; setting clear guidelines and expectations.

 

7: Our workforce has sadly reduced due to the pandemic. Within your role, talk us through some of the challenges you have faced. 
The hardest thing has been pulling classes from the timetable in the knowledge that teachers would find it hard to make ends meet financially, but knowing that it was necessary to keep our studios alive. Encouraging Yogis back into IRL classes has been slow for all studios, so trying to keep up morale has been tough. Each one of our teachers is amazing and my aim was to continuously reassure them of this even when numbers were low. It can be difficult to not let quiet classes impact our confidence as teachers. We’re coming out the other side now, which is incredible to see.

 

8: Describe what its like working for Digme in 3 words.