The frenetic rush of New York doesn’t faze Candice. A yoga teacher and artist moved just two months ago from Texas after graduating from college, she brings a slow thoughtfulness and intentionality into the spaces she enters. “New York feels like anywhere else, just with more people,” she says. “I think you can go anywhere if you’re grounded within yourself.”

For the photo-shoot, Candice and Chérmelle spent a long time trying to capture Candice doing a yoga pose in the shop. “We were trying too hard. I wasn’t feeling anything.” Then, in a moment of rest, Candice leaned against the wall and Chérmelle snapped the shot. “That was kind of appropriate because if I think about it, I don’t see yoga as a pose anyway,” she reflects. “It is a laboratory of self-inquiry. We are always changing and the pose has to change with us. We have to learn to let go – if we hold on, we get ego-inflation.”

When not at Pushcart or teaching her own classes, she works the front desk at a yoga studio, where her daily interactions with teachers and students provide plenty of fodder for thinking about the kind of atmosphere she wants to create in the yoga studio she hopes to open some day. She values gentleness paired with strength. With an appropriate slip, she says, “Jamie and Lisa run this studio with so much generosity and patience.” Maybe it’s not a slip after all – life itself is her studio.

To see how we turn the shop into an actual studio, come to Candice’s yoga class in the shop at 8:15 on Sundays. All levels welcome. Bring your mat and $10.

All photos by smdlr.
See Chérmelle’s impressions here.