Change Artist: A Life Lived Mindfully

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RIGHT OUT OF the University of Virginia, Kim Weeks was living "definitely a 'Sex and the City' lifestyle." Recruited by JPMorgan despite having no business studies, the overachieving athlete lived in New York, London, Japan and Hong Kong, working first in consulting, and then in marketing and communications.

Four years on, Weeks moved to Merrill Lynch, and then to a couple Washington dot-coms that promptly failed. Meanwhile, after pulling a hamstring while training for the New York City Marathon, she discovered yoga at age 22: At first, it seemed slow, but then "to stare at my own inner paint drying was a liberating experience."

Right out of college in England, James Foulkes went to work for "a major financial institution" in business analysis. Traveling the United Kingdom and beyond, the engineering major acted as "a translator" among the tech people, the business people and outside parties.

Foulkes began planning his exit from corporate life soon after entering, "though I didn't know when or how yet." After getting hurt playing basketball, he discovered yoga at 22. While also earning a master's in IT and studying management, the martial-arts student eventually began three years of training to become a yoga instructor.

Their paths crossed in 2007. Weeks, founder of Boundless Yoga on D.C.'s U Street (202-234-9642; Boundlessyoga.com), hired Foulkes as a teacher. "She's an innovative businesswoman with a lot of energy and vision," he says. "He brings a fresh, unique approach because of his integration of Qigong and yoga," she says.

Weeks, now 37, says she'd "grown increasingly discontent with what I was contributing to life and the planet." In spring 2002, after her second layoff, she spent a month living in a tent at Satchidananda Ashram-Yogaville in Virginia's Buckingham County. Abandoning the corporate world, she taught yoga in D.C. to subsidize Boundless, and by year's end was fully on her own.

"My business background gave me the confidence - not necessarily the knowledge - to take on the District" for permits, licenses, taxes and so on, she says. "I opened Boundless on no borrowed money - a radical approach. I needed it to be profitable from the first day."
Weeks worked with a designer to refine her logo and Web site. She spread the word in local gyms and offered a free class every Monday night. She walked around the neighborhood with a yoga mat: "People stopped me all the time to ask, 'Where do you take yoga?'"

By January 2003, she'd hired a teacher - and in March she hired another. The teachers recruited students, too. Boundless now has about 15 instructors.

In 2005, Weeks started training practitioners to be teachers. Her studio has trained more than 50, using a $3,250, 200-hour-plus yearlong curriculum that Weeks says takes twice as long as most area schools'. Other nearby studios that train yoga teachers include Flow Yoga Center near D.C.'s Logan Circle; Willow Street Yoga Center in Takoma Park; Down Dog Yoga in Georgetown, Bethesda and Herndon; and Yava Yoga in Fairfax. No national organization certifies yoga teachers, though Yoga Alliance registers teachers and schools that meet certain requirements.

Because Boundless needs to expand, Weeks has been working with the owner of Tryst and the Diner in Adams Morgan on a combined venue. "I work harder now than I ever did on Wall Street," she says - which poses a conundrum.

"It's too easy to get sucked into the day-to-day business stuff, from accounting to programming," says the entrepreneur. "If I don't shut the door and do meditative movement every day, the life goes out of my eyes and my business. It's really awkward to toggle between the creative-passion side and the building-a-business side."
Foulkes, 30, has felt the same conflict. Since moving to D.C. two years ago with his now-wife, who works at the World Bank, he has taught yoga, tai chi and Qigong and done craniosacral therapy. "A diverse skill set is my strength," he says. As is a mastery of detail: Foulkes has traveled by foot, bike, Metro and car to get to gyms, yoga studios, corporate offices and private clients all over town.

"Corporate clients can be lucrative," he says, but for individuals he charges anywhere from $17 to $120 an hour by ability to pay (james foulkes@hotmail.com). Around Washington, he estimates, yoga teachers at gyms and studios earn $40 to $80 per class; a Yoga Alliance survey shows that registered teachers charge about $15 per student.

It's not the most stable life, Foulkes says, but "you're not traveling when everyone else is, which cuts down on stress." And at least once a week, students tell him they feel "calmer, alive, more whole."

It's great to feel that you're helping people toward happier, healthier lives, Weeks and Foulkes agree. And both say, "This is the best thing I've ever done."

Written by Express contributor Ellen Ryan
Photo by Jason Hornick for Express