A conversation about yoga often begins with poses, but the heart of our exchange with Kerry Ferguson, founder of Yoga Tree, pulsed with breath, compassion, and the quiet courage to know oneself. Kerry’s path moved from early choices in wellness to transformative outdoor experiences and eventually to a profound encounter with free diving, where the hush of the sea mirrored the stillness she would later cultivate on land. This episode threaded together mindfulness, travel, and community healing, emphasizing how yoga becomes a lifestyle rather than a workout. It explored how gentle practices can steady a restless mind and how presence can turn any place—a studio, a beach, a kitchen—into a haven for growth.
Photos Courtesy of Kerry Ferguson
Kerry’s story began with curiosity: a teenager drawn to nutrition, movement, and a holistic approach to living. Outward Bound in Colorado sharpened her leadership and love for nature, while years of travel opened her eyes to herbal medicine, whole foods, and the wisdom of local cultures. In California, anatomy studies led her to massage therapy and to a teacher whose yoga classes connected the dots between body, mind, and purpose. New Zealand deepened her training. But the Bahamas changed everything: free diving taught her to regulate her nervous system and find calm under pressure. Guided by breathwork and meditation, she discovered the same peace on land, revealing yoga as the art of returning home to yourself.
Back in Tennessee, Kerry partnered with an internal medicine doctor exploring integrative care. She taught movement, stretching, and guided relaxation to a community just beginning to hear the word yoga. On a day shadowed by national tragedy, she chose to keep a planned class and fifty people arrived, seeking quiet togetherness. That night became a seed of growth for Yoga Tree—a shala, not just a studio—where parents, educators, athletes, and helpers gathered to learn meditation and movement that centered them for their work and lives. Kerry built a space that honored tradition while meeting modern needs: breath before intensity, compassion before comparison, simplicity before spectacle.
Breathwork is central to her teaching because it is simple and reliable, even when not easy. Sit tall, breathe through the nose, let the belly expand on inhale and soften on exhale, and lengthen exhalations to twice the count of inhales. This 1:2 ratio taps the parasympathetic response and quiets looping thoughts by occupying the mind with a gentle count. Closing the eyes reduces input and helps attention settle. Kerry’s approach dissolves myths that stillness requires perfect focus; instead, she invites people to notice thoughts like clouds and keep relaxing into clear sky. Over time, this practice builds a steady inner baseline that travels with you into noise, conflict, and change.
Travel weaves into her work not as escape, but as immersion. Kerry leads retreats in Greece and other places where nature and community are alive—small family-run restaurants, local guides, conversation at long tables. Mornings begin with meditation and yoga; afternoons bring exploration; evenings wind down with restorative movement and reflection. The result is not a vacation hangover but a strengthened sense of presence. Her retreats emphasize eating well, respecting the local culture, and giving back in concrete ways. Travel becomes an extension of practice: moving with awareness, listening deeply, and noticing how place shapes breath, and how breath reshapes experience. 
Yoga’s cultural swing toward fitness is real, yet Kerry is seeing practitioners return to the roots: philosophy, chanting, stillness, and study. She meets this shift with patience and integrity, teaching from the Bhagavad Gita and Yoga Sutra while welcoming those who first found yoga through sweat. The lesson she hopes students carry out the door is gentleness—toward themselves and others. One story from a silent retreat in Dharamshala distilled it: a restless neighbor, later revealed to be fearing for her brother’s life, had watched Kerry’s stillness to steady her own. We never know who leans on our quiet. That is why yoga, to Kerry, is an adventure: the brave act of meeting what is true inside us, again and again, and choosing compassion.
