My journey to yoga
I often wonder what my life would be like if I hadn’t discovered yoga…..
My first class was in a regular workout gym, and I wondered in out of curiosity. It was 1998 and I had heard of yoga before, but I didn’t really know what it was. My ex husband bought me a second hand yoga book when I was pregnant a few years earlier with our son, but reading through it I really didn’t grasp it and the book was donated to a charity shop.
I really loved my first class. I loved the slow movements. I loved the breathing. I was delighted at the opportunity to lie down and relax at the end. Where else do you get to rest for 10 minutes or more in a class? I needed this more than anything. So I went back the next week, and the next. And I’m still going 22 years later.
The same teacher sold the gym and started teaching yoga full time, so I followed her to her new venues and I also brought my mum along too. My mum has vertigo, and in that first session I thought she was dying as she nearly passed out getting up from the floor! Not put off, she kept going and actually her vertigo really improved. Yoga is a great healer, and this was my first introduction to that.
I haven’t had an easy time. My son suffered a brain injury at birth, and throughout his childhood I spent a lot of time taking him to appointments, meeting therapists, taking him to hospital when he was sick, and sitting up with him through the night when he had seizures. I had to work and I was also training to be an IT teacher, and it often felt too much to deal with. My saving grace was my time on the yoga mat. It helped me cope, made me feel better. The benefits for me have always been more on the mental level.
My teacher mentioned doing teacher training in those early days, but I didn’t think I was good enough and besides I had a job in college so I didn’t pay much attention. I think the seed was planted though, and in 2012 I signed up for my first teacher training course. The first of many!
The journey to self discovery, which is what I see yoga as, is not an easy one, and it can be painful at times to confront things about yourself as they come up. That is why you need the support of experienced teachers for these times; you won’t always need them but knowing they are there and being able to reach out to them is invaluable.
I never intended to teach yoga at all. I was happy teaching IT. Until one day I wasn’t anymore, and I had to do something else with my life. Events and circumstances conspired to give me a room in my home that wasn’t intended to be a yoga shala, but it turned into the perfect space, and one which has been of enormous benefit to me and to many others.
As my favourite yoga quote goes, “I fully expect to be doing yoga for the rest of my life” (Ali McGraw). And another quote that resonates for me is “If you can breathe you can do yoga” (Krishnamacharya). The perception is that yoga is all about the postures, but for me it is a way of life, and I love living this way, and sharing it with my students.