When Mimi Ghandour (mimiyoga_official) walked into her first yoga class 7 years ago, she had no clue how that single class would affect the rest of her life.
“I was very very depressed and I felt like my world was just crashing and ending so I decided to go to yoga in 2015 one day. This voice kept telling me, go to yoga, go to yoga, yoga is going to save you and that is how my yoga journey started.”
Fast forward to today, Ghandour is a mother, yoga teacher and entrepreneur, changing the lives of those who interact with her daily. Practicing yoga healed Ghandour, from the outside in, and she makes it her job to heal others. “I then decided to do my training to become a teacher to share that feeling with everybody around me, because we are all going through something.” she explains, “When you help people heal, you’re healing yourself as well.”
Ghandour knows that yoga is so much more than a workout, she commonly uses the phrase “work-in” to her students, as they are constantly working on themselves mentally and physically. Her classes go far beyond the physical workout, emphasizing spirituality because that is what helps you heal.
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She utilizes her singing voice throughout her classes, as she chants beautiful mantras, which she explained is protection for the mind, emulating the notion of mediating but through sound.
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Ghandour is a rock for her students and for her two children. Her 10-year-old daughter suffers from a muscle condition, which is an obstacle Ghandour faces daily. Living with so much pain on a daily basis, yoga helps her hurdle this obstacle, in which she cannot fix. “I do it to numb that pain and to feel better, to surround myself with community and grow my community because you really do heal through kindness.”
She discussed that her yoga practice and healing is not a one-way street, as much as her students need her, she needs them.
But Ghandour’s healing goes far beyond her local community. When the studio shut down amidst the pandemic, she shifted gears and created her own platform, mimiyoga.com. A year and a half later, her platform is growing daily and has users in over 64 countries worldwide. But the platform is also so much more than a typical on-demand yoga service, through Mimi Yoga Ghandour has created a full yoga school, teaching and training individuals to become certified yoga instructors. Ghandour describes this training as transformative.
With dreams and a heart, bigger than you could imagine, Ghandour is in the process of opening up her very own yoga studio. This studio is built on the concept of giving individuals who have been certified through her school the ability to use their training to teach in-person classes. Ghandour, fully embodying the importance of full-circle moments. By the end of 2021, she will have trained over 100 amazing new yoga instructors in just one year.
Ghandour emphasizes that there is no correct time to start practicing yoga, she encourages you to step on your mat and watch your life change.
You can find Ghandour teaching regularly at SOL Yoga in Wynwood or on her Mimi Yoga platform.
Photography by: Courtesy Mimi Ghandour
