Leslie Rangel loved her job as an on-air reporter at a television station in Oklahoma City. But covering devastating fracking-related earthquakes, chasing tornadoes, and interviewing people on their worst days started to take a toll on her.
Rangel found some balance in the yoga classes she’d taken since her days as a student at the University of Texas at Austin back in 2008. Then, in 2015, she started a 200-hour yoga teacher training at Ashtanga Yoga Studio in Norman, Oklahoma, and something clicked.
“The big question posed to us as students was, ‘How are you living your yoga off the mat?’ ” says Rangel, who is now a morning anchor for a television station in Austin. The training led her to completely reevaluate her life. “I knew that there was a way to continue in this mission of journalism, but to have it be different.” She began applying yogic principles to her reporting life: meditating and using pranayama techniques like