Wapsi Square

Kim Stedl

What is a Wapsi girl?

Funny, when Paul wrote to me asking me to write a profile of what makes me a Wapsi Girl, I was feeling anything but. I was really beginning to lose it with some work stress, coupled with PMS—yes I said it, but men get hormonal swings too, we’re all only human. Still, it made my day and was a reminder that the way we view ourselves is usually much harsher than the way we view others.

Ah yes, what makes me a Wapsi Girl is the question you are wondering. Well, Paul came across me after discovering my Punk Rock Yoga® project which I began in 2003 just setting out to teach a few classes for my community service requirement of my yoga teacher training and has grown into an international movement. Essentially, I developed a viewpoint that the job of a yoga teacher is to encourage students to discover their own spirituality and moral code, not to tell them how to think and berate them for not following the teacher’s moral code. We also believe yoga can help create community bonds which are absent in our high tech car-bound isolated world. We also see yoga as empowering for everyone, not just certain for people of certain races, genders, classes and sizes. In addition, I finally developed my favorite class, Shake Rattle & Pose®, which is a wild fusion of yoga and dance. I finally went out and made this happen. My next pursuit is to finally write my DIY yoga book, and develop some teacher training programs, and possibly open my yoga retreat center.

What makes a person a Wapsi Girl I suppose is integrity. We say what we believe and do our best not to compromise our morality and beliefs. When I’ve felt pressured to compromise my integrity, in corporate settings, it always has bitten me in the ass. This is why I’m taking a risk in taking some time off to write and pursue my dream of being an author. Also, a Wapsi Girl is an innovator. Anyone can have an idea, but not everyone gets off their rump and does not only pursues their ideas, but sticks with them even when things fall flat at times. Yes, we can fail and we can be criticized, and yes all of that sucks, but not trying and always wondering “what if” sucks more. I think it also means being human – we’re not always perfect, sometimes we screw up, sometimes we behave badly, but we keep trying to do the right thing. Most importantly, we define what doing the right thing means because we’ve given it a hell of a lot of thought.

Website: http://www.punkrockyoga.com/