Leading Off: A little bit of yoga makes everything better — and sometimes can turn around lives | Entertainment

“I am a work in progress,” said the owner of  Studio 4:8 Yoga, named as an homage to Philippians 4:8. “We’re all works in progress. Anyone who sits here and thinks they have it all figured out is lying.”

Still, there’s a calm surrounding Meyer, a perpetual ball of energy. There’s an inner peace that exudes and gives the look of someone who has mastered the daily grind.

She laughs again, remembering her rambunctious days.

In a former life, Meyer was the voice in a lot of local radio commercials. Her most famous catch phrase might have come while pitching a nutritional supplement when she asked the question few of us dare to fathom.

Do you want to look better naked?

That seems like a lifetime ago. So does being raised on the racetrack watching her father Lonnie Jensen lap the field at Eagle Raceway and the now-defunct Midwest Speedway. 

“He was a big deal in the ’80s,” she says, acknowledging you don’t grow up on pit row without being able to spit fire, turn a wrench or find mischief around just about any corner.

“I was a mess,” she says. “I was not a good teenager.”

Judging anybody by their teenage years is a fool’s errand. Teens are supposed to make mistakes and learn from them. Seldom are their screwups irreparable. But sadly, sometimes they have tragic outcomes. 

So, if you’re keeping score at home, Meyer was a typical teenager — perhaps a little rougher around the edges than some, but not as awful as she might lead you to believe.

Maybe that explains the soft spot this 40-something has for Nebraska’s youth and why she looks forward to going into the Youth Detention Center a few times a week through Lincoln Public Schools’ Pathfinder program to teach the yoga that she says “saved my life.”

“Yoga teaches you that you’re not in control of anything, (except) the way you react,” she said. “I’m not a savior by any means but I can give them some tools to help cope with the world better.”