Exploring Life & Business with Grace Izzo

Today we’d like to introduce you to Grace Izzo.

Hi Grace, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
To put it simply, yoga saved me. I lost almost a decade of my life to a severe eating disorder hating my body and by extension, myself for both my skewed perception of my physical appearance and the debilitating brain fog, exhaustion, and pain caused by my fibromyalgia. Growing up as a classically trained ballet dancer, I had previously been exposed to yoga as a form of cross-training, but it wasn’t until a four-month stay at a residential eating disorder treatment center that I was introduced to yoga first and foremost as a tool to connect with my body and stay present. For the first time, my body didn’t feel like a foreign entity, and I was able to move in a way that felt empowering rather than punitive.

I truly believe that the yoga teacher training that I enrolled myself in one month after treatment ended was the single greatest investment that I have made in myself. Yoga teacher training is about so much more than memorizing postures and learning how to pronounce Sanskrit. Over the course of six months, I not only learned about yoga and meditation but also about myself. I became confident cueing a class despite being the youngest in the room, a kind of confidence that doesn’t fade when I roll up my yoga mat and leave the studio. I learned how to give and apply criticism without taking it personally. My sense of self-developed as I overcame challenges and reached goals, and set more.

Yoga has immensely improved my life in terms of managing my fibromyalgia symptoms. At age twenty, I took medical leave from college because symptoms were becoming unbearable. It was only then, after seven years of symptoms, that I received a diagnosis. Like many others who live with chronic illness, my symptoms had been misdiagnosed for years as a physical manifestation of my mental illness. On flare days, yoga is my respite. It reduces brain fog, joint pain, and stiffness and improves my energy.

At age 19, a year after I became certified, I founded Yoga With Grace, LLC with the mission of sharing my love for yoga with people of all ages, body types, experience levels, and genders. Through my body-positive yoga classes, I’ve had the privilege to connect with seniors in assisted living facilities, high-risk youth living in underprivileged areas in NY, athletes at North Carolina State University and Virginia Polytechnic and State University, graduate and undergraduate students at Virginia Polytechnic and State University, the LGBTQ+ community, and people of all different sizes. Though we come from different backgrounds, yoga is our common language. As someone who grew up going to a private Catholic school primarily made up of white people, I value yoga as a tool to connect with others who came from a different background than mine.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
It hasn’t been a smooth road, no. Managing Yoga With Grace, LLC, working part-time as a social media marketing manager, and being a full-time student at NCSU while having an unpredictable chronic illness has necessitated that I develop strong time management skills. I can’t go out with my friends every weekend like a typical 21-year-old because I’ve learned over the years to be intentional with how I spend my time to maximize productivity when I’m experiencing the least amount of fibromyalgia symptoms. And even with the best time management skills, I couldn’t do it without the support of my incredible parents, Kathy and John Izzo, my yoga mentors, Kristie Fast and Courtney Mance, my business inspiration and friend, Chris Dandrea, my best friend and rock, Clare Landis, and countless other people that believed in me when I did not.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Yoga has allowed me to greatly improve my quality of life through alleviating many of my fibromyalgia symptoms and radically transforming my mental health, and my mission is to help people of all ages, body types, experience levels, and genders find the relief and healing that I did through yoga. I am a firm believer that everyBODY can be a yogi, and am passionate about helping individuals find relief from chronic pain and eating disorders through yoga. You can follow my yoga journey and learn more about the intersection of chronic pain and eating disorders on my Instagram, @yoga.with.grace.

What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?
The most important lesson that I’ve learned on my journey is to take things one day at a time. This mantra has gotten me through my hardest days in recovery. I tell myself that I will just get through the next 24 hours without using maladaptive coping behaviors. Tomorrow? Full permission to relapse if I want to. And then, I wake up and commit to repeating it another day. Taking things one day at a time has also helped me from getting overwhelmed as a young entrepreneur as I navigate running my own business. Every day, I create a list of the critical things that need to get done and focus on prioritizing those action items rather than stressing over the endless things that I could be doing to grow my business.

“One day at a time” is so important to me that I got it tattooed on my forearms in Sanskrit as a permanent, visible reminder to myself in eating disorder recovery. Permanent, because I don’t get a chance to opt-out of recovery if I want to continue serving others through yoga. Visible, so I have a tangible reminder in the tough moments. Sanskrit, because yoga has helped me on my path to eating disorder recovery more than any treatment center or medication. Getting the tattoo was a way to view my body as art, and I can genuinely say that I love my body much more after I got them.

Contact Info:

• Email:yogawithgrace123@gmail.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/yoga.with.grace/

Image Credits
David Villanueva Photography, Amber Luis Photography