Bradley Franco

Once I found my passion for yoga and teaching, the rest became history.

Since the age of 5 I have always been passionate about sports (tennis, baseball, and a bit of soccer). The best coaches I had established the importance of linking breath and movement towards improving mental and physical capabilities. As I grew in the sports I played, I noticed that my way of learning came from teaching others. I would help my teammates to have a more effective serve in tennis or a better throw in baseball as a way to reinforce what I had already learned. From those early days, teaching became my way of learning. Unbeknownst to me, I had fallen in love with helping others.

At the age of 15 I was offered the chance to become a tennis coach. It was an uncomfortable step forward, but a necessary one as it was my first real job. I learned quickly how to pass on my knowledge of the game. As time went by, my teachings developed to a more mental to physical approach, linking breath and movement to enhance strength, improve mental clarity, and enhance performance overall. To say the least, I was thrilled to see the progress in my students. 

The power of mental strength stuck with me and became my true interest throughout high school. I then decided to pursue Psychology in college, graduating with a Bachelors Degree from Chapman University in Orange, California. After graduation, I decided to take a typical sales position at a corporation with the opportunity to make a very comfortable income. However, I soon realized that the passion I had for mental and physical health was far from priority. Even in my own life, I went from healthy eating and consistent exercising to packaged and processed foods, and a lack of physical movement. The discomfort and discontent came rushing in. I knew I had detached from my passion of helping others and needed to get back on track. 

Luckily, during this time, I was introduced by a friend to my first yoga class in Newport Beach, California. After my first session, the yoga teacher who taught the class firmly insisted that I must come back to take another class. Something with regards to my high energy. I was definitely drawn in. I somehow knew that this was the right place for me, and this one yoga class became the turning point in my life. The reason: yoga links the mind to movement and breath all at once. 

Within 6 months of taking that class, I became a certified yoga instructor, soaking in every bit of knowledge I could find. I then spent countless hours sharing every ounce of information I knew with students and friends. Since then, I’ve devoted all of my time and energy to teaching yoga and sharing my passion with others. As of today, this has translated to over 1,500 hours of teaching classes across the United States and Europe.

I believe that success in each person is directly related to his or her attention to breath and body rather than the direct difficulty of the pose.

All the knowledge that I have had as a sports teacher and yoga instructor has helped me to define my own structured way of teaching students with an authentic focus on care for each person that I teach. In each class, my focus is specifically tailored to individual self-care and the small accomplishments in the body processes of each person rather than the destination of the pose itself.