She Picked the Retreat Center Before She Had a Business: Jackie Wilson

Jackie Wilson found the place she would host her first yoga retreat three years before she had a yoga business to host it for.

She was between London and India, taking a month in Sri Lanka to surf and reset, when she wandered into an Ayurvedic retreat center in the middle of the jungle. No studio, no students, no plan. She stood there and decided that was where she would bring people one day. This January she brings them.

Barb Garside is a Broker Associate with Coastal Chatham at eXp Realty Luxury, selling luxury coastal real estate on Cape Cod, and she has known plenty of people who came back to Chatham and had to invent their own reason to stay. Jackie learned to swim at Oyster Pond, taught lessons there, then lifeguarded. Her parents have owned the family home more than 40 years. She left for Fordham, Hong Kong, New York, London. When she finally came home she noticed there was no yoga studio in town, called the Chatham Community Center, and left a voicemail for Sue, her old boss from lifeguard days. Chatham Yoga turns two in September. When the Sri Lanka trip opened for booking, the first people to sign up were a couple who started with her back when a class cost less than a coffee.

Hosted by: Barb Garside

Guest: Jackie Wilson

Jackie Wilson is the founder of Chatham Yoga, which has run year round at the Chatham Community Center since September 2024 with Hatha on Mondays and Yin on Thursdays. She studied art history and cultural anthropology at Fordham University, spent four years in Hong Kong and several in London working in business development across the art and design industry, and completed her yoga teacher training in India. She now works in e-commerce with The Expert and supports an art gallery at international fairs.

What You'll Learn

• Coming home to Cape Cod without walking away from the career that funds it

• Starting something by noticing the one thing your town is missing

• Pricing a class so money stops being the reason people stop showing up

• Practicing stillness when everything around you is asking to be counted

• Teaching a beach class where half the room has never tried yoga

• Building a Chatham lifestyle out of the water, the weather, and whoever turns up

• Trusting a decision made three years before you were ready for it

• Finding the corner of Chatham where you go to hear nothing at all

Pull up a chair for the Chatham Coffee Tour and hear where a lifelong Oyster Pond kid goes to get quiet.

Connect with Jackie Wilson

Website: http://chatham-yoga.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chathamyoga/

Connect with Barb Garside

Website: https://barbaragarside.exprealty.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coastalchatham

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barbara-garside-a78a554

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BarbGarside

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