Building a life, and a living, from yoga and movement

FAMILY BUSINESSDinae Landis Hackett

   It is eleven years ago, I am very pregnant with my first child and itching to move my body without constraints and worries. I wander into a Yoga Aerobics class at the YWCA in Princeton in search of freedom.
   There is a pounding African drumbeat that causes me to immediately pop my shoes off and wait barefooted for the instructor to tell me what to do. A curly haired, pregnant woman breaks free from a gaggle, radiates a smile in my direction and then travels across the floor with such loose-limbed abandon, grace and balance that I know it will be worth my while to follow her.
   That class, as corny as it sounds, changed my life. But it happened in small stages almost like little sparks, over the next 11 years. And it is not the aerobic part that stuck.
   "This is my life’s work," says Princeton resident Jaime Stover Schmitt, the woman with the grace and balance and, as I have come to learn, a great goofy laugh and knowledge that runs so deep it seems to emanate from her pores.
   Ms. Schmitt’s life’s work is yoga and movement. She has been practicing yoga since the age of six when her mother couldn’t find a babysitter and had to take her to one of her yoga classes in the early 1960’s. She remained with that first teacher for the next twelve years until she began teaching yoga classes of her own at the age of seventeen.
   Then in college she decided to try dance so she auditioned and was accepted into a professional dance troupe. After college, she spent time as an assistant professor of dance at Loyola Marymount University and taught aerobics with Jane Fonda. In the eighties she returned to her yogic roots and studied in India and then moved to the Himalayan Institute in Holmesdale, Pa. where she met her husband and studied under Swami Rama for many years until his death in 1996.
   To Ms. Schmitt, who now has a doctorate in Dance/Movement from Temple University and a certification in Laban Movement Analysis, yoga is not the hottest trend in exercise that comes complete with stylish, stretchy clothing. It is instead a several thousand year old tradition passed down by the masters that can enrich, heal, strengthen and balance any person’s life.
   "Yoga is not just for people with perfect bodies and the right clothes," she says emphatically. Yoga aerobics is just one of many ways that Ms. Schmitt employs her passion for yoga. She has taught prenatal yoga, yoga for preschoolers, seniors and for cancer patients. She has also taught body awareness and back care classes, meditation and radical healing to name just a few.
   "I love all my classes. I love the people who do yoga. I think people have a playful sense of self-acceptance while doing yoga," says Ms. Schmitt who has been teaching yoga in the Princeton area for 17 years in class settings as well as privately in her "tiny" home studio connected to her house where she lives with her two children and husband.
   "I am my own boss. I don’t have to go to committee and get approvals or agreements," she says adding that most of her marketing has been word of mouth and that her work has evolved in an organic fashion.
   From her carpeted, sun-dappled studio with a desk in one corner and space to move in the rest, she has written two books — one is called Every Woman’s Yoga, the other is a collection of articles called Yoga for Pregnancy —and is currently completing a third book about yoga for performers.
   She has also founded and trademarked her unique style of yoga called Spanda the Yoga of Movement. In New Jersey, you can watch Spanda Yoga with Jaime Stover Schmitt on cable Channel 30, Thursday evenings at 8:00 p.m.
   All of this, while seeing hundreds of private clients over the span of her career. It is in these private sessions, she says, that people experience the magic of yoga. A person may come to her after surgery and physical therapy where they have been told they are ready to lead a normal life but they don’t feel confident. Or, someone has pain in their legs but an MRI shows nothing. Ms. Schmitt will look at how they walk and how they stand and maybe recognize they are not fully using one leg so they work on balancing and bringing the leg back into commission through yoga, movement and breathing exercises.
   In this country, it is still a relatively new notion that yoga can be used to help people heal. But that is what Ms. Schmitt aspires to do and has accomplished for her yoga therapy clients. "If people could take a breath and work on their own healing processes they may be able to avert some more invasive and life altering procedures. I don’t know anyone who wants to be on [pain] drugs, they just want relief," she says.
   "Yoga gives us the tools to meet our life’s challenges whatever they may be. This is why the work is so varied," concludes Ms. Schmitt.
   A few weeks ago, I graduated from the 200 hour Spanda Yoga teacher training course. As Ms. Schmitt handed me my certificate, I embarked on what just may become the rest of my life’s work —- as a yoga teacher. I am so glad I had the instinct to follow her across the floor that day so many years ago.
   Jaime Stover Schmitt’s website is Spandayoga.com