Living in the present, she founds her own yoga school

By KATY SAVAGE
[email protected]
CHESTER, Vt. — Like most teenagers, Liza Eaton felt insecure about how she looked and what others thought of her.

She was a 15-year-old student at Leland & Gray Union High School in Townshend, Vermont when she was introduced to yoga through an eight-week program offered by Bonnie Bokenkamp in the school cafeteria.

“It made me feel more secure in my body and like everything was going to be okay,” Eaton said. “It made me accept myself more physically as a teenager and mentally, physically and  emotionally.”

Eaton drove a half hour to Brattleboro every day after school to learn yoga at a studio there.

Now, at age 30 Eaton is opening a school for yoga teachers in Chester. 

“I think my biggest goal in life is helping our world be a happier, more loving, connected place,” she said.

Buddhaful Yoga, Eaton’s 200-hour school, is opening in September. It’s the only Yoga Alliance-approved school in the area.

“It’s a big leap to now be a school that’s officially recognized by Yoga Alliance,” she said.

Yoga Alliance is a nonprofit that sets standards for yoga teachers. Eaton wrote a syllabus and spent $1,000 to prove her program follows traditional practices and meets ethical expectations.

Eaton has been teaching yoga at the Fullerton Inn in Chester since 2013. She took over yoga classes there from Bokenkamp, the person who first introduced her to yoga as a teenager.

“She’s flying,” said Bokenkamp, who said Eaton was quiet and thoughtful as a teenager. “It’s beautiful to see.”

Eaton decided she wanted to focus on yoga as soon as she graduated from the University of Vermont in 2009, after watching yoga DVDs in her college dorm room. She learned how to teach others at a 200-hour training at Yoga Vermont in Burlington. She continued learning from teachers in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. 

Yoga is a gift she said she wants to give to others.

“It sets your tone and it sets your energy for the day,” Eaton said. “It takes you into a higher state of consciousness.” 

Eaton wakes up between 5 and 6 a.m. for her own spiritual practice — a routine that involves a self-oil massage, nasal passage cleanse, meditation and chanting. 

Doing that, she said, makes her more connected to the people around her. 

“I’m more useful to this planet,” she said.

She’s aware of the breeze in the air, the people she meets at the grocery store, her own breath, and even the Earth in general.

“I really feel the Earth’s support under my feet,” Eaton said.

One of her students is her mother, Cris Eaton, who also has 200 hours of yoga teacher training under her belt. 

“It resets the nervous system and resets your way of thinking of the world,” Cris said of yoga. Cris has also noticed a difference in her daughter since she started yoga.

“She used to have a very busy mind,” the elder Eaton said. “She [now] models that inner peace.”

Yoga has taught younger Eaton to live in the present. It has also taught her more about who she is, aside from the insecure teenager. It has taught her her love of others, which she brings into her classes.

“She’s full of light and love,” said Lynne Reed, one of Eaton’s students. Reed and her husband formerly owned Misty Valley Books next door to the Fullerton Inn.

The cost of Eaton’s school is $1,995, if you sign up by July 15, or $2,200, if you sign up by Aug. 15.

“It asks you to go deep at looking at yourself inside,” Eaton said. “We are all one and really experiencing that is a big deal.”