Many paths - a yoga journey
"Yoga is the journey of the self,
through the self,
to the self”
- The Bhagavad Gita
Sometime in Spring 2013, my dear friend Reetta asked me if I wanted to come along with her to a yoga class at a community centre in Brixton, London. Up until that moment I didn’t have much interest in yoga. Blinded by my own ignorance, I thought it would be too slow, a bit boring, maybe a little too hippie for me. Not my kind of thing. I wanted something that would challenge me, make me move and keep me focused. Yoga could not be it, right?
As you can imagine, I was proved wrong pretty quickly. When the class finished I was sweaty, I had worked muscles I didn’t even know I had and the challenges of the practice helped me to keep my focus all throughout the class.
To my surprise, I was also elated by an unexpected feeling that I could only describe as lightness.
It was a welcomed relief at a time when I was going through a period of much worry and anxiety.
This is how my love story with yoga started. Although it took me a long time to realise it was love. I found the practice hard - I didn’t know how to work with the breath, my flexibility was rusty, I didn’t have much strength and the poses were new to me so I got lost often during the class.
Every time the teacher said “downward dog” I thought “oh, no that one again!” But somehow the beautiful feeling I had after that first practice was there every time. So I kept coming back to the mat. One class at a time, what I found difficult or frustrating got a little easier and even pleasant.
The community class was sadly cancelled but soon after I crossed paths with my long term teacher Pieter. It was then when yoga became a regular practice in my life. I resonated with her energy, her way of teaching and the snippets of wisdom that she gracefully embedded in her classes. I was happy to get up at 6.45am twice a week to practice with her. Having that routine meant I learnt some of the sequences and I started practising at home too.
It was not long after when I found myself in the middle of tumultuous life situation: I felt pulled in different directions, lost and helpless. But while everything around me seem to be falling apart, my yoga classes remained untouched amongst the storm. I remember one day after class having the clear thought: “yoga is keeping me sane”.
That’s when I truly understood that there was more to it than the physical aspects. The practice was showing me the path of coming back to myself, to that place of serenity and knowledge that we all have.
Yoga has not magically transform me into a completely new person - anxiety still shows up and the work of changing many behavioural patterns continues. This is a long life journey. But I have an invaluable tool that helps me to find my centre whenever I feel lost, to connect with others, to navigate the rocky times of life and be more present and grateful of everyday gifts. Not forgetting the physical benefits of a practice that is always evolving, always showing you in the outside what’s going on in the inside.
“Tell your story” is what my teacher Jamie said to me when I did my first yoga teacher training. So here it is a piece, the start of it. I hope that writing about the beginnings of my yoga journey helps somehow to illustrate that you don’t need to have specific experience or body or beliefs to try out yoga. We all get to it from different backgrounds and for different reasons and we stay or leave depending on what we’re searching for at that time.
All you need to bring to the mat is an open mind and an open heart. The practice will reveal itself in a unique way that relates to you. As in life, you can take what serves you and leave the rest.