One night we drove through what seemed to be an empty field and ended up swimming in a volcanic vent where hot water seeped straight out into the ocean! - Kaitlyn, retreat guest
We got tossed upside down and around and the only thing that kept us steady was just holding onto the rope. - Kit, retreat host
If, in your world travels, you happen to come across a volcano, you’re likely to also come across Rosie and Kit Volcano, who hold periodic retreats at active volcano sites around the world, like this one in the Azores islands off Portugal. They call themselves Yoga Life Coaches, and when they’re not visiting volcanoes, they’re working magic with their coaching clients, both offline in San Diego and online. You’ve probably never met a Yoga Life Coach before. Neither had I, until I met these two. Not being into yoga myself, I had to find out just what a Yoga Life Coach can offer that’s different from other life coaches, and how much into yoga do I have to be to experience the transformation they offer.
Apparently, not much. Rosie and Kit offer life coaching in person or online, and then offer up live Yoga sessions to their tribe on Facebook. Anyone at any level of yoga, from beginners to the most advanced practitioners, can experience the magic of The Little Volcano, their self-named business.
These two megastars however are from from “Little.” From their manifestation bathtub series every Monday on Facebook to their Volcano Yoga Retreats, the upcoming one taking place this September in which they will experience the Autumnal Equinox atop Mount Teide in the Canary Islands, where they will experience one of the the most spectacular views of the Milky Way available on earth.
The Volcanoes brand of Life Coaching revolves around mind, body and spirit, with a heavy dose of accountability thrown in. As life coaches, Rosie and Kit help support you in both determining and manifesting your vision, clearing out the blocks that have been holding you back from your deepest desires.
How they do it is signature Volcano style.
So what does yoga have to do with it? Well, in a sense, everything. Rosie explained it to me by sharing her experience the first time she trained with Ana Forrest, creator of the Forrest Yoga technique Rosie and Kit espouse.
“So it comes time for the handstand, and I haven't done a handstand since I was a kid. I remember just thinking, ‘Everybody else will do a handstand and I'll just do this thing called down dog on the wall. It's okay if I never do a handstand. I'm just not a handstand person.’ And then one of the assistants comes over to me and she tells me that I’m getting in a handstand, and I was like ‘No I'm not. It's okay. I don't need to do a handstand,’ and she said ‘Yeah, you do. Come on.’ And so she basically coaches me through it and I go upside down and I remember just this crazy thought going through my head. It was like panic. And then I come out. And I'm ‘Wow.’ The thrill that you get and the sense of accomplishment and a sense of fear conquering that you get just from doing a handstand. It applies to every other area of your life as well. It applies to other things that you might be irrationally scared of. There are things in life that people have a lot of fear around that the fear itself is what's keeping them from moving forward. Once you actually go after the actual thing [you’re scared of] you realize it wasn't that scary to begin with.
So it's about taking the lessons you learned in yoga and applying them to other areas of your life, other areas where you're not growing, where you're making yourself suffer more than you should, or where you are putting up with a quality of life that [you don’t] want.”
One of the trademarks of Forrest Yoga is in holding poses for freakishly long periods of time. Rosie advises us to pay attention to, when the pose gets too uncomfortable, or metaphorically, when life gets too uncomfortable, where you start to check out, where you numb yourself to the present moment, where you vacate presence, and where you, like Rosie and the handstand, give up before you even begin.
Through their Yoga Life Coaching, Rosie and Kit guide you in reclaiming the present moment, pursuing your vision and experiencing transformation, through a combination of meditation, shamanic journeying, yoga and ceremony. It may sound sort of “woo-woo” and “out there,” but it may just be the kind of “out there woo woo” that the world needs to reignite passion and fire.
Being a lesbian couple, there were few traditions Rosie and Kit felt particularly beholden to when they got married, least of which was their surname, for which they randomly decided on Volcano, after a thrift store “Make Your Own Volcano Kit” sitting on their shelf.
As time went on, they realized how appropriate their seemingly accidental name turned out to be. Volcanoes represent creativity, destruction and new life. They destroy, and yet the earth following their eruptions becomes new and fertile.
Volcanoes are also a source of healing. People come from all over the world to experience the healing powers of mineral hot springs, whose heat is generated by the flowing magma underneath.
As Rosie explains, “The whole idea of volcanoes [is in] being this kind of contradictory thing where they can either destroy or create. They can provide these healing, clear mineral rich waters that people [flock to for healing, or] they can create these bubbling boiling geysers of mud that [kill].”
Rosie and Kit Volcano embody this contradiction themselves. What started as a marriage between two lesbians, Kit’s transitioning to becoming a man has made their marriage ironically far more traditional. Their “woo-woo” shamanic journeying and ritualistic ceremonies are wrapped in extreme accountability that would make a conventional business coach’s repertoire pale in comparison. And the transformations that their clients are manifesting are life-changing, within the bathtub, and without. After all, life tends to toss us upside down and around, and sometimes the only thing keeping us steady is the rope we hold onto. Yoga life coaches Rosie and Kit help us find that rope within ourselves.