Patty Weinstein inspires women to engage in physical activities and grow strong.

Patty is currently a yoga instructor at 24 Hour Fitness in the San Mateo and Millbrae areas. She started teaching yoga about six years ago. She loved exercising so much, and she started thinking, how she used to want to be a P.E. teacher and teaching yoga is something along those lines. And, not only can she do something that she loves, she is also able to encourage other people to do something that they love.

ZENPLIFICATION:
How did you become a yoga instructor?

PATTY:
This one’s easy. As a teenager, I’ve always wanted to be a PE instructor. Because that’s always been my favorite part of anything, the physical activity. It always made me feel better from whatever mood I was in. I’ve always been physically active. When I first joined 24 Hour Fitness, I started with a weight lifting class. I fell in love with the freedom of feeling strong. When you take a bar, and lift it over your head, it was exhilarating. So, I became hooked on that class. I would schedule my vacation around that class, so that I could always be there.

ZENPLIFICATION:
Do you think physical activities are connected to the heart?

PATTY:
When you’re exercising, you’re working, but afterwards, you feel good. In a pilates class, it can be extremely challenging, but it’s partly because we’re opening the front side of the body, and we don’t normally do that, we have a tendency to curl in on ourselves rather than opening. Whether it’s opening to people, or opening to challenges, or just being open. And getting in touch with the breath. And so when I started doing pilates, I used to do weight lifting and I used to run. And both of those shorten the muscle and they have a tendency to curve your body over, and pilates made you open up. That gave me my posture back, and I was in my 40s and I was already not standing up very straight. I was always tall, and being called a jolly green giant in school, and has been asked, how’s the weather doing up there. You know how cruel kids can be, that was my normal posture, and my husband used to pull my posture back. It was painful because I didn’t stand up straight. That is what pilates gave me back. Not to mention the core strength, there’s just so much we don’t do physically, that we should be doing for the only body we’ve got. You definitely feel the endorphins in all physical activities. Just being appreciative of the fact that you can go anywhere, whether it be a gym, or outside, and I really like being outside breathing air and let the bus drive by. When you run down El Camino Real, and breathing the air, noticing, say, a beautiful tree, just simple things, to make us realize how lucky we are to be able to be alive and be able to move, regardless what our limitations may be, we are still able to do something.