Stephanie Paolini never wanted to become a yoga teacher.
When she signed up for yoga teacher training in San Francisco in 2015, she did so mainly to learn more about the practice she’d come to love from taking five classes each week at several Boston yoga studios, and then at studios in the Seacoast, where she moved in 2014.
Every morning of her 30-day immersive training out west, Paolini began her journal entry, “I will never become a yoga teacher.” Looking back now, the 45-year-old owner of 3 Bridges Yoga (3BY) in downtown Portsmouth says her defiance served as a protective shield.
“It was more to have that safeguard up,” Paolini told Portsmouth City Lifestyle in an interview while vacationing on a sandy beach in Mexico. “I didn’t think I was as good as the rest of the people there.”
But when she returned to her home in Berwick, Maine, after training, word started spreading in the tight-knit Seacoast yoga community that Paolini had completed her yoga-teacher course.
Bjorn Turnquist, then the co-owner of 3BY, quickly approached Paolini to ask her to teach. Paolini declined the request, but then, a week later, agreed to demoa class for him.
A middle-school math educator at the time, Paolini had come to love teaching and making an impact on people’s lives, an enormous change from her high-flying past life working in real estate, first in Massachusetts and then in southern California.
But after an ovarian cancer diagnosis in 2009 landed her in the hospital at age 29, Paolini realized she wanted more for her life. “I’d done these other things that made me money. But they didn’t fill me up in the way that I was told money would make me feel.”
Paolini reflected, “I felt like my own personal true north was guiding me to show me it's not about money. It's about asking: What are you doing in this world?”
She won her battle against cancer, and went back to school to earn her master’s degree in teaching, completing her degree in 2011. She taught middle-school math in Southboro, Massachusetts, for four years before taking a sabbatical for yoga teacher training.
In her initial demo class at 3BY, Turnquist didn’t like what he saw. Disgusted, Paolini returned to her Berwick farm to “fix” her teaching flaws, and then repeated the demo class again a week later.
“Yeah,” Paolini recalled Turnquist saying, “I guess you can teach.”
Paolini then threw herself into teaching yoga, often leading 15 classes per week at the 3BY studios in Portsmouth and Durham, and in York, Maine. She quickly found that teaching yoga provided her with the sense of purpose that nothing had before.
She never went back to teaching school.
“For me to feel successful, I need to feel like I'm contributing something that's gonna change even one person in a positive way,” Paolini remembered feeling in her early teaching days. “And how could making hundreds of thousands of dollars ever feel better than doing something that's helping somebody else?”
When Turnquist and his wife, Jody, decided to move to Florida in 2019, they approached Paolini and a business partner about their interest in potentially acquiring the studios.
They agreed, with Paolini soon becoming sole owner—six months before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the fitness world.
The Durham studio was shuttered before the pandemic. Because of losses incurred due to COVID-19, Paolini made the difficult decision to close the York location, focusing her energy on the Portsmouth studio on High Street.
With 15 experienced instructors on staff and more than 120 classes per month, 3BY is often cited as one of the top yoga studios on the Seacoast. For her weekly Sunday morning yoga class, Paolini regularly packs in 50 to 60 yogis of all ages, genders, and athletic abilities.
Like many other beloved businesses on the Seacoast, 3BY exudes a sense of community, lauded by Paolini.
“I feel like we've created a container where people feel comfortable to be themselves,” Paolini says of the studio, which also leads worldwide yoga retreats and hosts an annual yoga teacher training. “And a place to truly and authentically connect with other people. As human beings, we yearn for that.”
It’s a comfort to 24-year-old 3BY student Jane Spear. “It’s a space where you can show up just as you are,” Spear said. “It’s a place of acceptance and understanding. There is no judgment or exclusion, and that’s why people come back week after week.”
Now more than ever, Paolini said she feels it’s important to bring people together in settings like this. In the age of constant connectivity, artificial intelligence, and “little computers” in our pockets, she said she’s seen a shift in behavior through the years, mostly in Savasana, the final pose where yogis are asked to lay flat on their backs for five to eight minutes. People used to be able to lay still for that long, but now, they start getting fidgety three or four minutes in, she says.
In life on and off the mat, it’s vital to put distractions aside and live in the present moment. “Whatever you're doing right now is the most important thing you can be doing,” says Paolini.
She frequently reminds herself of just that, and will carry that message with her through 2026 and beyond to keep herself grounded. All in all, that’s a wise philosophy from someone who never wanted to teach yoga.
3 Bridges Yoga
185 High St, Portsmouth, N.H.
3bridgesyoga.com
Whatever you're doing right now is the most important thing you can be doing.
I feel like we've created a container where people feel comfortable to be themselves. And a place to truly and authentically connect with other people. As human beings, we yearn for that.