North Texas Daily

Erica Wieting / Staff Writer

A single yoga mat is the only occupant in the living room of a two-bedroom apartment on Teasley Lane. It’s all 20-year-old yoga teacher and nutrition sophomore Madison “Madi” Borowitz needs to make her happy.

“Yoga makes me feel connected to myself,” Madi said. “It makes me feel great every single day.”

She said she wants to share the joy that yoga has brought her with all of Denton. Madi is currently trying to build up a private clientele, offering private yoga sessions at her Eureka Village apartment for $60/hour.

“I love Denton,” Madi said. “Denton gives you a big hug and takes care of you.”

Nutrition sophomore Madi Borowitz does the “wild thing” yoga pose. Borowitz is a yoga instructor in Denton.

Despite the six hours of highway between her apartment and her family at home in Houston, she remains very close to her parents. She said her mom is one of her main inspirations.

“I miss her terribly, but I want her to be where she wants to be and do what she wants to do,” Madi’s mom, Carol Elkin, said. “Now is the time in her life for her to go figure out what that is.”

Madi is currently taking online classes for nutrition, as her ultimate goal is to simultaneously teach yoga and offer nutrition counseling.

“Teaching yoga has been something she’s dreamed about since she got into it,” her dad, Steve Borowitz, said. “It’s always been a place where she felt most comfortable with herself.”

Madi’s interests in both yoga and nutrition began when she was 14 years old.  After she got out of the hospital for anorexia, she said she needed a way to start feeling good again. Yoga was that way.

“Yoga played a huge part in my recovery,” Madi said. “It’s been a slow crawl, just like everybody else’s eating disorder struggle, and I couldn’t have done it without yoga.”

Within a year of starting yoga, Madi was already teaching classes. Although she was the youngest one in the class by at least 10 or 20 years, Elkin said Madi would fill in for the instructors when they were absent.  She also taught yoga to 3- and 4-year-olds at a gymnastics center in Houston.

Borowitz sits “bound with mudra,” holding Buddha prayer beads.

“After the first year, I knew teaching yoga was probably something she’d be doing at some point in her life,” Elkin said. “It was that focus and that connection to her physical body that healed her.”

Since no yoga teacher training in Houston was available during non-school hours, Madi said she waited until she was in college to pursue her teaching certificate. She attended UNT as an art major for one semester. Then, in the spring of 2014, Madi decided take the semester off to enroll in a training program in Dallas called Uptown Yoga.

“I was working almost full-time at Chipotle and driving to Dallas four times a week,” Madi said. “I was so busy and I was tired all the time, but the training was great.”

Madi said her boyfriend Hayden Davis encouraged her to move forward with the training.

Borowitz performs a successful shoulder stand. Borowitz switched from an art major to nutrition after teaching yoga.

“If it wasn’t for him, I probably wouldn’t have done the yoga teacher training,” Madi said. “I just had the idea in my head that this was the time I was supposed to go to college and do the whole ‘university’ thing.”

Davis and Madi have been dating for more than a year and a half. They met when she came to Denton in the fall of 2013 to start classes at UNT.

“I didn’t know a thing about yoga at all when I met Madi,” Davis said. “When she came into my life, all of a sudden I had a beautiful woman doing outrageous poses in my shed.”

Madi also practices ujjayi breathing, or conscious breathing, as part of her yoga training and taught Davis the method. All breathing is done in and out through the nose in order to strengthen the diaphragm. Literally translated, “ujjayi” means “victorious breath.”

Borowitz practices the “dancer” yoga pose. Borowitz began by teaching younger students.

“I do the breathing absolutely every time I start panicking over anything,” Davis said. “I’m on my own, and the world is a scary place, and things get difficult.  Madi being here has changed my life.”

Madi would eventually like to teach yoga full-time in Denton. She plans to pick up some private clients, as well as teach some small classes.

“I definitely want to be teaching in a studio for a few years so I know the way the business works,” Madi said. “Hopefully, if I teach really well at a studio, people will follow me where I go.”

Featured Image: Nutrition sophomore Madison Borowitz poses in the firefly position. Photos by Adriana Salazar – Staff photographer