Mind, Body, Spirit

It is a long way from building boats in Kennebunkport to mid-morning epiphanies in Little Italy, and even farther from the subarctic snow banks of Fairbanks to transforming an empty Lakewood storefront into a new yoga studio, but that is the path Marcia Camino took in creating Pink Lotus.

A Chicago native, Mrs. Camino grew up in Texas, Indiana, New York, and finally Toledo, Ohio, where her steel-working family settled down. While attending Bowling Green University she declared a major in English, and the next year transferred to the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, where she earned an MFA in creative writing. She told her parents she wanted to be a poet.

“But, honey,” she remembers her mother saying. “Poets don’t make any money.”

After graduation she stayed in Alaska, writing, waiting tables, and backpacking the state’s national parks.

“It was very beautiful up there,” she said.

Back home in Bowling Green she worked in modern dance and theater, met her future husband in 1992, and four years later moved to Cleveland. Planning their wedding in 1999, Mrs. Camino surveyed her dress in the mirror.

“Like every young lady I needed to fit into my dress,” she said. “I heard yoga was good for that, so I bought a mat and video tape.”

She practiced every day for six weeks and on the day of her wedding successfully fit into her dress. Afterwards she rolled up her mat and put it away.

“I was happily married, writing, taking art classes, working full-time at Case Western University, everything was fine, no yoga,” Mrs. Camino said. “And then my husband went away to Kennebunkport, Maine, to get certified in wooden boat building. He was gone for a year. I was left to my own means. Not a good idea.”

She turned to long hours at work, enrolled in photography and film classes at night, ballet on weekends, shooting a 16mm black-and-white movie in her spare time, and began to burn out.

“I was eating Pringles for breakfast and lunch,” she said. “I got really super thin and sick. I was a madwoman.”

One May morning in front of her TV in their apartment in Little Italy she unrolled her yoga mat and began to practice again. As she practiced “that yoga stuff’” in her living room she experienced a shift in perspective, physically and spiritually.

“I realized I had been living externally, trying to capture "out there," and I was missing in here,” she said, pointing to herself,  “I missed my husband, and I missed my own soul. I just lost it. I remember lying on my mat in child’s pose. It was saturated, not with sweat, with tears.”

One day on her mat led to every day on her mat, and eventually in 2004 to training at the Amrit Yoga Institute. She earned her 200-hour certification, going on to study with such nationally-recognized master teachers as Paul Grilley, Rodney Yee, and Shakta Kaua Khalsa.

Amrit Yoga, Mrs. Camino’s home base as a teacher and student, is often referred to as the Posture of Consciousness. It consists of several breathing exercises, twenty-six classic yoga postures, meditation between postures, and deep relaxation.

In 2005 she relocated to Cleveland's west side, buying a house in Lakewood with her husband Joe, and began teaching yoga part-time at studios, colleges, and fitness centers. After five years of free-lance ‘Have Mat, Will Travel,’ eventually earning Yoga Alliance EYRT status as a teacher, Mrs. Camino began to scour Lakewood for a studio of her own.

“Deep down I was always spying for places, to create a space reflective of my personality, esthetics, and yoga philosophy,” she said.

When she found the space she wanted, Mrs. Camino gave up her 9-to-5 job at CWRU and signed a lease on the west end of Lakewood.

“It’s a lovely part of town,” she said. “There are churches on either side of the street, and we’re in a 1911 Tudor-style building. It’s only a mile-and-a-half from my house, rather than thirty miles!”

While many cities lack even one yoga studio, Lakewood sports three, with a fourth just across the bridge in Rocky River, as well as on-going classes at the YMCA and Harding Middle School. Mrs. Camino’s Pink Lotus will be the fifth full-time studio in the area.

“Yoga has always been very hot on the coasts, since the 1960s,” she said. “It’s growing in the Midwest, and it makes sense in a community as diverse as Lakewood.”

Unlike studios that specialize in Vinyasa, a generally faster-paced workout, Pink Lotus tenders a wide range of the contemporary and traditional, including seldom-seen styles like Sivananda, which is what one of Mrs. Camino’s students describes as yoga’s greatest hits.

“My studio offers styles geared towards fitness,” she said. “But we offer more, because faster-paced workouts are not available to everybody, yoga that is breath-based, therapeutic, reflective, and, in the case of Chinese Yoga, new to the Cleveland area.”

She cites a special love for Yin Yoga, created to benefit the body’s connective tissue, where humans first and primarily age.

“We will be trying to bring to all we teach a sense of balance, happiness, and soul,” she said.

After months of planning, permits, and renovation, Pink Lotus opened in early December 2011. Like many another first-time business owner, Mrs. Camino had to overcome a series of obstacles, from raising necessary capital to finding the right plumber.

The solution to burning the midnight oil turned up right next-door.

“Breadsmith is always in eyeshot,” she said. “I look out my windows and I’m thinking of hearth-baked artisan bread when I should be thinking of my yoga.”

Blending the personal and professional, Mrs. Camino’s Pink Lotus is both a calling and business, feeding the body, mind, and spirit.

“I see many people who need yoga,” she said over a slice of Mediterranean Herb bread. “It saved my life. If it helped me, I think it can help anybody.”