It was August 2004 when Sam Salwei was hitchhiking back from Missoula, Montana. He was an avid climber and adventurer, lucky enough to be picked up by similar folk.

Sean O’Connor was also an avid climber and slackliner, something Salwei had never tried. The duo stopped at a rest area and set up a line where Salwei quickly discovered he wasn’t so bad at slacking. O’Connor hopped on the line and struck a pose, hand-to-big-toe-pose, to be exact. He hopped off and mentioned he wanted to write a book called Yoga for Slackers.

Fast forward a year later and Salwei is with another yogaslacker, Jason Magness at the Yoga Journal conference in Estes Park, Colorado. The two are slacking and strike yoga poses on a line. A camera somewhere clicks, and a photo of yoga on a slackline shows up in Yoga Journal a few weeks after. After being exposed to a large community of yogis, the duo started getting calls. People wanted to learn slackline yoga, and this came as a big surprise to Magness and Salwei.

They put their heads together and produced a DVD, and Yogaslackers was manifested—a yoga practice fused together with slacklining. They began teaching around Colorado, doing a bike tour using slacklines and acro yoga to fund the trip.

“That gave us a lot of traction with people wanting to learn more and showed us it was possible to create an income by teaching acro yoga and slackline,” Salwei said.

He had always been an entrepreneur, it only took the right venture for it to stick. He had weaseled his way into an internship at a climbing gym, and started to travel to do more climbing, never focusing on a career path, only focusing on a life path and doing what made him happy, but always centered around adventure. The business aspect fell into his life by chance.

The Yogaslackers business was a surprise. It was totally organic and created itself based on what they wanted to do, Salwei said, adding that his original vision was blurred. Before it was an established company, the Yogaslackers only adhered to a schedule that ran alongside the road they traveled. Their adventure was important, and now they’re able to be a bit more selective.

They still adventure, though. The Yogaslackers now teach worldwide. “Basically as far as you can go, we’ve gone,” Salwei said. Malaysia, New Zealand, Patagonia, and all over the United States are checked off their list, and their teachings spread much further than that. The group started doing teacher trainings, and now have 86 yoga teachers slacking all over the planet.

Slacklines, usually comprised of a couple inches of flat nylon or polyester webbing, obviously pose a much bigger challenge than attempting to balance on a yoga mat. The practice is tedious and brings in an entirely different level of awareness and focus. Salwei thinks it’s not as much about balance as it is about being present completely. While doing yoga on a mat, or not on a slackline, the mind can wander a bit and there will be no consequences. On a slackline, there’s no room for wandering. “Your body will tell you [because] you’re not on the line anymore,” Salwei said.

He said it’s basically not trying to control the slackline, but trying to let the slackline do what it needs to do, and the slacker finding the counter balance for that movement.

Another yogaslacker, Raquel Hernandez, a fellow traveler and teacher, chimes in on the subject of balance and the relationship between yoga and slacklining. Much of learning how to balance on the slackline is learning how to find calmness and stillness inside, even when the slackline is shaking, she said.

“It’s not about learning to stay balanced, or stay still,” Hernandez said. “It’s about knowing that you can find that stillness regarding what is going on.” This applies to every situation on or off a yoga mat, or slackline. The practices teach awareness and stillness, and for Salwei, the lifestyle that he’s created around it has allowed for him to be himself, completely.

For many, yoga is a lifestyle practice that changes a person physically and mentally. Yogaslacking is no different. Salwei has no plans to quit the lifestyle, which for him includes thousands of miles of traveling, rock climbing, and acro yoga. The yogaslacker lifestyle is not just hanging around on slacklines, it coins itself as “extreme living with awareness,” and whether or not practitioners follow that motto, the founders and core crew surely do.

Team Yogaslackers participates in a number of adventure races throughout the year, including the Maya Mountain Adventure Challenge in March 2014, where they took first place, and the 2014 Expedition Idaho race where they also took first place.

Now, the Yogaslackers have embarked on a 40,000-mile road trip that will touch every single state in the U.S. while teaching yogaslacking along the way. The End of the Road Tour is the last run for the Peace Love Car, a 1988 Ford Festiva with more than 430,000 miles on it. The car has served as an office, home, and a well-known symbol of the Yogaslackers, and this is its last year. Salwei and Hernandez will drive the sticker-covered, well-traveled machine until its retirement. They even made it to Hawaii as part of Wanderlust O’ahu, sans Peace Love Car.

As of August, the crew is in Newfoundland and will be making their way west through Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Dakota, a quick trip to Alaska, and back to the Midwest. They are finishing the year with a yoga retreat in Thailand.

Despite all the travel, adventure, movement, and activities, the group has remained grounded. It’s their practice that keeps their minds calm, but their bodies moving. Salwei and Magness have turned their passion into careers, and continue to teach by example.

“I try to live by example by doing whatever I want to do,” Salwei said. “I’m trying to affect the world in a positive way.” Since he started, he makes sure to check back in about why he’s doing what he’s doing, and make sure it’s still important—still a passion. Until that changes, he’ll be traveling and slacking along the way.

Images courtesy of Yogaslackers