Today we’d like to introduce you to Dan Hall.
Hi Dan, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Where I am today is very different from where I started back in 2013. Today, I work fully for myself as a Yoga Instructor and Energy Work Practitioner. My focus is to support others in their physical, mental/emotional and energetic well-being.
I moved to the Dallas-Fort Worth area back in July 2013. I had just graduated from Penn State University’s Master’s program in Forensic Drug Chemistry and was starting my first job at Dallas County’s crime lab, The Southwestern Institute of Forensic Sciences as a Drug Chemist. It was during my time at Penn State that I began practicing yoga. I would go to the weekly Wednesday class at the student center called “Yoga with Doug”, and this was my first true introduction to yoga. This time of my life was very stressful and uncertain. I didn’t know where I was going to end up after graduation, or where I would be working. I found that yoga became something that was my own. It helped me manage my stress, I could breathe better, and I could track my progress. At this point in my yoga practice, I was mainly focused on the physical aspect. My goal: “I need to be able to touch my toes in a forward fold while keeping my legs straight.” (Don’t ask me why – this is what 22 year old me thought was needed to “do yoga right”).
After living in Texas for a little while, I eventually found a yoga community in Fort Worth. I quickly became friends with the owners of what would be 3Tree Yoga. I helped them build out the studio space that was located off S. Jennings Ave in my spare time outside of working at the lab. Not long after, one of my friends finally asked “So Dan, when are you going to become a yoga teacher?” It had never been on my radar. I sat with it, and every part of me told me to go for it.
Fast forward some, I began teaching yoga classes at 3Tree Yoga in 2015 and I’ve never looked back. I found more than a yoga community, I found friends that became like family at each studio I have worked at since. I took training after training for several years from here on out. I literally could not get enough. I completed a yoga teacher mentorship program in 2015, my 200hr RYT certification in 2016, my 300hr RYT certification in 2018, then a second 300hr RYT certification in 2019. Somewhere in that mix, I took a few shorter trainings on the side to get certified in offering Yoga Nidra, Stand Up Paddle Board Yoga, and Reiki (a Japanese energy healing modality). Each training was unique, amazing, and helped shape me into who I am today. Keep in mind, I was balancing all of this while working full-time as a Forensic Chemist. As I’m sharing this now, I realize how insane I must sound. This was so many things in such a short period of time! All I can say is it felt incredibly necessary, and I was having a lot of fun in the process.
During all of the trainings and yoga teaching, I got a new job as a Forensic Chemistry Team Leader at NMS Labs located in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in late 2018. I was in charge of a team of drug chemists and excited for this new role that would allow me to grow as a chemist and a leader. I went in thinking I was going to work here for the rest of my career. I was so excited to be working for NMS. I was 29 years old at the time, and I remember my first day in training very clearly. I had an immediate gut feeling “I am not going to be here for as long as I thought. A while, but not forever.” I stuffed that thought back down where it came from because I couldn’t handle the thought of a big career change again soon. There we go, nice and cozy. Cue the dramatic irony.
Over the next 6 years, I worked my way up into the Forensic Drug Chemistry Site Supervisor role where I was in charge of approximately 15 chemists, 2 supervisors, and an evidence processing team. Simultaneously, I was doing well in my yoga career assisting in yoga teacher trainings, hosting workshops and special events, and teaching a few classes a week. I felt like I had the best of both worlds. One was the sensible job, one was the fun job. You can guess which one was which.
It was around late 2023 that I really began to feel the extreme burnout settle in at the lab. I was so tired, my health was being affected from the stress, and that doesn’t really begin to describe how empty I was feeling. I had been praying for so long for a way out. I wanted more than anything to fully transition to teaching yoga full-time, but I would only do this in a way that was safe, supported and sustainable. I was not going to put my husband and I in a bad financial situation. I spent months of sitting in my meditation practice and visualizing what it would feel like in my body to be living the life of my dreams, asking again and again “When can I teach yoga full time, I just want to teach yoga. I am so tired.” Each time, the answer I felt in my body was “Keep going, be patient. It’s coming but not yet.”
By June 2024, I was ready to crash out. I was beyond the point of exhaustion. I had reached that point of burnout where you hate every day (and I hate to even say this, but that’s where I was). I kept sitting with the same question in my meditation “when can I teach yoga…”, but this time the answer that came forward was different, clear, and a full-body feeling of “Yes. Go for it.” This jolted me at first. I clapped back “You sure about that?” I sat with this feeling for the next several weeks, feeling into what life would be like if I stayed at or left the lab. One path felt very limited, one felt unlimited.
I finally asked my husband after one particularly hard day at work and a casual mental breakdown on the couch at home if me leaving the lab and teaching yoga full-time would be the worst idea ever. He knew very well how miserable I had been, and after some financial planning we both agreed it was doable for quite a while so I could give it the best possible chance.
Slowly, I started to tell friends and family over the next couple of weeks and by end of August 2024, I left the lab. Everything moved so fast from that point on. It was as if the Universe was waiting for me to acknowledge and trust the information I was receiving. As soon as I did so, it was as if two big hands opened beneath me like a safety net. The feeling was “ok, I’ve got you.” I felt safe.
I left a career I built for 17 years and held these two careers together from 2013 to 2024. I felt fortunate to have two careers I loved (I really do still love forensics, it’s an incredibly interesting field). What I realized on the other side is that it had to be both. Making the switch sooner would have been reckless and I wasn’t ready. My career in forensics supported building my career as a yoga instructor and my career as a yoga instructor taught me how to be a better leader, how to lead with clarity and compassion vs. with an iron fist.
I have been living my dream life since Labor Day 2024, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I have a quote on my wall in my yoga space at home that has helped me in building this new life. It is by Albert Einstein “Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be done no other way. This is not philosophy, this is physics.”
Also, I still can’t touch my toes in a forward fold while keeping my legs straight, but the journey down to my feet has been the most rewarding one I’ve taken so far.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
That’s a great question. I cannot say it has always been smooth. I think the simplest way to put this is that the years I spent growing up in my 20s to become who I am in my 30s has given me the clarity that I no longer care to live my life in a way that is more pleasing to others than it is to myself. This is my life, and no one else is living it for me. However, it does benefit others if I am happy with the life I live, so that’s what I plan to do from here on out. I became really tired of learning my lessons through struggle. For this next phase of life, I have set the intention to learn my lessons from joy and fun. They can still be challenging, but I’m done believing that lessons can only come from struggle.
I think the biggest struggles I hit were my fears around taking up space, being truly seen, and the self-destructive need to people please. Growing up in the 90s and early 2000s (don’t worry, I’m still an 80s baby) in a smaller country town in western PA as the G the LGBTQIA+ wasn’t always easy. It led me to want to hide for a lot of years and to not want to been seen since that didn’t feel safe as a teenager and young adult. There was always the fear of what people will think or say, if they will think I’m to weird or too much, and oh god now I have to come out again and again every time I start a job somewhere new. Literally exhausting. My way to navigate this was to overcorrect through people-pleasing, to be so good at all the things so people wouldn’t be as likely to judge. What I learned was that people-pleasing is a great way to live someone else’s idea of a happy life, and a great way to set yourself up for a very unfulfilling life.
All that aside, I am at a point in life where I can look back on all of my past experiences (the good, bad and ugly) with a lot of gratitude. They shaped me into who I am and have led me to be right where I am today. I am so incredibly grateful. But please, don’t make me go to a high school reunion for the love of god.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I love what I do, and I could talk all day about it if given the opportunity. I am a trauma-informed RYT-500 yoga instructor and energy work practitioner with over 1000 hours of formal training. My main areas of focus are Hatha Yoga, Meditation and Breathwork, Nervous System Support, Reiki, Shamanic Healing, Quantum Lightwork, and Sound Healing.
In my offerings, I love blending Hatha Yoga with meditation, breathwork, and mindful movement to help students reconnect with themselves to feel more grounded, clear, and centered in daily life. My goal is to help students feel more confident and power-filled in their mind, body, and life. I would say my specialty is in meditation and breathwork. I have devoted a lot of years of my life to studying and exploring the vastness of the mind and Consciousness Itself through meditation and the breath. These tools are the master key to good health, well-being, and happiness and it is my sincere desire to share this with others. This has helped me so much in my own life.
I think what sets me apart is that I am also deeply curious and passionate about quantum healing and energy work techniques. I try to approach these modalities as scientifically as possible and with a lot of curiosity, to practice suspending disbelief even if for a moment, to be open to greater possibility. We can use these practices to receive information and insight in a non-traditional way, a non-conceptual way of knowing. These modalities teach us how to feel our way through, not think our way through, each experience. In time, this brings us to a place of greater joy and equanimity, taking us out of the head so we may descend deeply into the felt sense of the body•mind. I have had many beautiful experiences exploring my own healing with these techniques and I am so honored to be able to hold space for others in this way now.
What I am most proud of is the personal growth I had to go through to even be in this place I am in today. To have the confidence to break away and lead a life that is fairly of out of the norm was not easy. The thought of leading the life I am living today was terrifying a few years ago. My hope is that me breaking away from the norm is an example for others to take the leap of faith and follow their passion.
What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?
I believe the core lesson I have learned in more recent years is how to listen to and trust my own inner wisdom. For a large part of my life, I felt I that I could not trust my own inner knowing without someone else’s help, confirmation or validation that I was on the right track. I also held a belief that I could not step into the fullest version of myself because of the fear of what others might think or say. There was also a lot of fear that I might not be able to “handle it” if/when I stepped into the fuller version of me. Working through this belief was just part of the process I had to go through to come full circle and to deeply trust my own inner wisdom without leaning on others for validation. Once I was able to surrender to the flow of life, I truly felt for the first time that life was happening for me, not to me. I believe that the more we fully place our trust in the Universe and the information received, the more wisdom and opportunity we will be trusted with.
Pricing:
- 1:1 Trauma-Informed Yoga/Meditation/Breathwork Sessions – $125/hr
- 1:1 Yoga Teacher Mentoring/Coaching Sessions – $125/hr
- Custom Energy Work Sessions (Reiki, small animal Reiki, Shamanic Healing, Sound Healing, Quantum Lightwork, or a combination thereof) – $65 to $125
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.danhallyoga.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danhallyoga/
Image Credits
Amber Shumake
