Audra Carmine and Jessica Garay, Co-Founders of Love Hive Yoga
These two Portland mamas combined yogi forces to share the healing and empowering effects of yoga throughout the Portland community. Founded just over a year ago, Love Hive Yoga has seen wild success and growth with a quickly expanding community of practitioners. Audra and Jessica were inspired to create Love Hive because they wanted to become more deeply connected to a community and have deeper relationships with the students they were teaching regularly. Love Hive was formed with a vision for making a home where all people can seek out their innate love and connection to themselves and each other. They offer a full set of classes, workshops, teacher training courses and yoga retreats for the Love Hive Community.
Audra Carmine
Mom to Veda (15) and Ursa (8), Audra has been teaching yoga for six years full-time and currently teaches five classes per week and runs the 200 and 300-hour teacher training programs while managing all aspects of the business alongside Jessica. Prior to her present life, she was a single mom and owned a restaurant which she says prepared her for the opening of Love Hive last year. She believes yoga is one of the most powerful and accessible healing modalities and says nothing is more inspiring than empowering students to know themselves better, make meaning out of their lives and develop a more mindful way of moving not only their bodies but out there in the world.
Audra is most proud of her kids who she believes will go forth into the world and really make a difference. She is also proud of her marriage which she says has taught her “the real yoga” through both hard times and good times.
Words of Wisdom: “Sometimes as mom’s we put ourselves last, and that’s not sustainable…my ritual grounds me in the knowledge that I am being taken care of too, that I am deserving of care.”
Jessica Garay
Jessica says her daughter Luna (3) is a force of sweetness and power. She must get at least some of that from her mother who isn’t just a yoga teacher but also a social media strategist, web designer, retail designer and fashion buyer, crafter of energetic essential oil blends, event coordinator, curriculum writer and much more. When it comes to striking balance in her work life Jessica says, “It is fun to be able to discover all the various strengths that I have and thankfully I am perfectly paired with a business partner who almost exclusively likes to work on the opposite things that I do.”
Of Jessica’s many accomplishments, she is most proud of her marriage which is the result of a whirlwind romance with her husband who lived in Peru. She says, “To say we were naive to the challenges of an inter-cultural relationship, let alone what a marriage is all about is an understatement,” but hard work has kept them together through the tough spots and she is now looking forward to celebrating their upcoming 10th anniversary this spring.
Words of Wisdom: "I have had to learn to understand what my energetic, emotional, and physical limits truly are—which are each very different—and then respect all of them."
