Manifestation—it’s one of those words that might not hold much weight until you’ve imagined something important, but maybe seemingly unattainable, and seen it come to life. It’s also how yogi and blogger Shayla Quinn started her journey when she was working at the Alo Beverly Hills store, dreaming of being a yoga teacher in the Alo community.

She opened up about her story after a recent yoga class that she taught at Alo headquarters, radiating so much joy that you never would have guessed she was in a funk just a few hours before. “I tend to be more insecure than confident,” she tells us. “It’s something I’m working on. Even walking into the Alo store at the Grove. I’m like, ‘Am I good enough to teach here?’ I’ve been battling with it. Two days ago, I finally was like, enough. Stop getting in your own way. You are here for a reason.” The reason being, she worked really hard to get there, and honed in on her power to manifest change.

Shayla moved to L.A. from Orange County at 19 to pursue acting and music. She worked in nightlife to pay the bills and focused on her real passions during her downtime. A month after moving she took her first yoga class, and, equipped with an extensive dance background, figured it would be a breeze. Reality kicked in after the first flow when she realized how challenged she felt—both physically and emotionally. But she kept returning to the mat. “I would take really long breaks from my practice, and then something would happen in my life, and I’d be like, I need yoga.” Shayla even did two teacher trainings, but solely for the purpose of deepening her practice. “It was like sending myself to a little spiritual bootcamp,” she says.

Then, two years, ago, she realized she was spinning her wheels but not getting any closer to her goals. So she started her blog Namastshay (we’re big fans!), dove into deepening her practice, took up meditation and, two months after that, started working on the retail team at the Alo Beverly Hills store. She had seen one of the teachers in her training wearing Alo and, when the first store opened, visited with her mom. “I remember sitting up in the studio and thinking, I want to teach here. I want to be a part of this brand.” A few weeks later, shopping in the store, she asked a sales associate if they were hiring, and the next thing she knew, she was helping customers find their perfect leggings.

Still burning the midnight oil at a job in a nightclub (and hating every minute of it), Shayla worked shifts at Alo during the day and squeezed in blogging whenever she could. After about a year, she just couldn’t keep it up anymore, and left her job at the store with a heavy heart—and a newfound goal of becoming a yoga teacher—vowing to stay in touch. Fast forward to a year later, and our Culture and Community Manager asked her to teach a single class at headquarters. “I was like, what? Me? This is crazy!” she tells us. At that point, Shayla was working 20-hour days. She was gaining traction on her blog and Instagram, and knew that teaching that one class had the potential to turn into a full-time gig… but she was scared to make the shift.