YOGA NAMASTACY
Powerful Body. Peaceful Mind.Yoga, lifestyle, and self-realization.
2021 IDEA World Instructor of the Year / Co-Creator of the First College-Accredited 200/500-Hour YTT / 2,000+ Trainings Delivered Worldwide
Get to Know Stacy
Stacy McCarthy is an Integrative Wellness expert, celebrated speaker, and yoga specialist known for transforming lives through a holistic approach to yoga, lifestyle design, and self-realization.
Named the 2021 IDEA World Instructor of the Year, Stacy co-created the first College Accredited 200- and 500-Hour Yoga Teacher Training and has delivered over 2,000 trainings to audiences as large as 1,000 people, speaking at events around the world.
A former full-scholarship athlete at Colorado State University with a degree in Exercise Physiology, Stacy spent years in the corporate world before answering the deeper call of yoga. Today she teaches women — at any age — how to have a powerful body and peaceful mind without dieting or excessive exercise.
Stacy lives in Rancho Santa Fe, California with her husband Tom, where she teaches at her in-person Yoga Nest and welcomes a worldwide community of students through her online platform.
“A lot of people find yoga intimidating.
My mission is to guide them past that fear. To give them the confidence to get on their mat and live their fullest life.”
On the Blog
The Class That Taught Me What 65 Really Means
A birthday wish, a room full of teachers, and the sequence that moved us allI have taught thousands of classes in my life. But I will remember this one for the rest of it. For my 65th birthday, I did not want a party. I wanted a practice. So I asked my community to...
The Vinyasa That Meets You Where You Are
A new way to flow, breathe, and belong on the matThere is a moment I will never forget. A woman in her early fifties walked up to me after class, eyes glassy, and said, "I think this is my last yoga class. I just can't keep up." She had been showing up faithfully for...
She Is All Around Us — A Mother’s Day Story That Will Stay With You
There was a season of my life that I will always hold as one of my most profound yoga laboratories. For six years, under one roof, three generations of women lived together — my mother, myself, and my daughter. Three women. Three seasons of life. One kitchen, one...
On the Gram
🎂 DAY 63 OF 65 🌻
Yesterday was my birthday. 65 years. 💛
When I started my 65 Days to 65 journey, the idea was to post for 65 days straight.
Well... that didn’t exactly happen. 😉
Life happened. Teaching happened. Travel happened. Family, work, celebrations, responsibilities and all the beautiful messiness of actually living happened.
And somehow, that feels pretty perfect.
Because longevity isn’t about doing everything perfectly.
It’s about returning.
Returning to the practices that support us.
Returning to the people we love.
Returning to our bodies.
Returning to what matters.
So today, on my 65th birthday, I’m celebrating Day 63 of 65... not because I did it perfectly, but because I kept going.
And maybe that’s one of the biggest lessons of this season of life:
Consistency doesn’t mean never missing a day.
It means you keep coming back.
This Saturday, September 12, we’ll arrive at Day 65 together with one of my favorite ways to celebrate anything:
🌿 Yoga in the Garden.
Movement. Breath. Community. Longevity. Laughter. And probably a little birthday mischief.
At 65, I feel more grateful than ever for this body that has carried me, this practice that continues to teach me, and the extraordinary people who have walked, practiced, learned, laughed and grown alongside me.
Here’s to not counting the years simply by how long we’ve lived...
but by how alive we are while we’re living them.
63 down. Two to go. 💛
See you in the Garden for Day 65. 🌿🧘♀️🎉
Day 62 of 65🥳🎉
65. Still flexible. Still curious. Still a little dangerous.
Another lap around the sun. ☀️
Which sounds very grown up for someone who still wants to handstand, dance, travel, laugh often, and say yes to things that make life more interesting. 😉
This year, I’m less interested in “anti-aging” and more interested in fully living.
Strong body.
Curious mind.
Open heart.
Good friends.
Big laughs.
Great food.
More stamps in the passport.
More time doing what matters.
I’ve learned to care less about proving, pleasing, and getting it all right.
And more about joy.
Connection.
Freedom.
Purpose.
And feeling really good in the life I’m living.
There have been beautiful chapters, hard chapters, surprising chapters, and a few I definitely would not reread. 😂
But every one of them brought me here.
So no, I’m not trying to turn back the clock.
I’m just planning to make this next lap a really good one.
65 and still moving.
Still learning.
Still laughing.
Still becoming.
And definitely not done yet. ☀️✨
Day 60 of 65 Days to 65 🎉
My birthday is getting very close, and this year I have a birthday wish for you. 💙
On Tuesday, September 8 at 9:00am PT, I’m teaching a special Yoga for Longevity class live on Zoom.
Consider it my birthday gift to you.
We’ll move, breathe, create space in the body, and celebrate what it means to keep feeling strong, mobile, vibrant, and fully alive at every age.
If you’d like to join us, comment BIRTHDAY YOGA below and I’ll DM you the link. 🎂🧘♀️✨
Day 58 of 65 Days to 65 ✨
I’ve been thinking about the seasons of life as I get closer to my 65th birthday.
🌱 Spring: We learn. We’re shaped. We discover who we are.
☀️ Summer: We test ourselves. We strive, stretch, stumble, build, and become.
🍂 Fall: We begin to harvest. Experience sharpens us. We know what matters, what doesn’t, and where our energy is best spent.
❄️ Winter: Wisdom. Leadership. Legacy.
At 65, I don’t think of winter as an ending.
I think of it as a season of clarity.
Less proving.
More knowing.
Less chasing.
More choosing.
Less about becoming someone new, and more about fully inhabiting who I’ve spent a lifetime becoming.
And I have a feeling there’s still a lot of life left to live. 💙
What season are you in and why do you love it?
Day 57 of 65 Days to 65 ✨
Yesterday I wrote about soft discipline.
Today, I’ll take it one step further:
Extreme wellness can sometimes work against longevity.
If your version of “health” leaves you exhausted, obsessed, deprived, injured, or constantly starting over, is it really health?
I’m far more interested in what you can sustain for decades than what you can survive for 30 days.
Longevity, for me, has looked surprisingly simple:
Move often.
Eat mostly whole, plant-powered foods.
Sleep.
Hydrate.
Manage stress.
Stay connected.
Enjoy your life.
Yes, challenge yourself.
But don’t confuse punishment with discipline.
The healthiest habits are often the ones that feel almost boring because you can keep doing them again and again.
At nearly 65, I’m convinced of this:
Consistency will outperform intensity when intensity can’t be sustained.
Build a life you don’t constantly need to recover from. 💚
Day 56 of 65 Days to 65 ✨
I was talking about green juice and plant-powered eating back in the ’80s, long before either was trendy.
What has kept me going all these years isn’t extreme discipline.
It’s soft discipline.
The kind that doesn’t burn you out.
The kind you can actually live with.
I’ve never been drawn to harsh cleanses or all-or-nothing rules. What works for me is simple: green juice, big salads, whole foods, nature’s bounty and small resets I can return to consistently.
Those small choices, repeated over decades, have made a far bigger difference in my health and vibrancy than anything extreme ever could or any fad or trend.
And because I have that foundation, when I do indulge, I can truly enjoy it without guilt or deprivation.
Longevity isn’t built in five intense days.
It’s built in the quiet choices you’re willing to keep making for a lifetime. 💚
What is the small choice you make consistently over time?
Day 54 of 65 Days to 65 🍋🍉🍑🍓🥑🍒
Lunch with friends today and it has me thinking about one of my favorite truths:
Food is information.
What we eat shows up in how we feel, how we think, and yes, even how we move on the yoga mat.
I try to choose foods that help me feel energized, clear, nourished, and vibrant, while also remembering that food is meant to be enjoyed and shared.
Today, it’s about both: nourishment + connection. ❤️
Let food support your vitality, not replace it.
Day 56 of 65 Days to 65🌳🌻
Yoga has taught me to think in terms of a lifetime.
A 30-day challenge can be fun. It can create momentum. But what if instead of asking what you can accomplish in 30 days, you asked:
What could 30 years of consistent practice create?
The strongest trees in the forest don’t grow overnight. They grow slowly. Deep roots first. Strength over time.
I think the same is true for us.
The practices that have changed me most haven’t been extreme. They’ve been the ones I’ve returned to again and again. Movement. Breath. Stillness. Listening.
Because when you get quiet, what needs to be heard gets loud.
And when you never get quiet, what has been left unheard can quietly begin to rule your life without you even realizing it.
Longevity isn’t just about living longer.
It’s about staying connected enough to yourself to notice what is shaping the life you’re living.
So maybe the challenge isn’t 30 days.
Maybe the challenge is to find a practice you still want to be doing 30 years from now. 🌿
