To me, yoga is not an exercise, it's a way of life. I started practicing yoga in college in 2010 and have been on and off with various forms of yoga including vinyasa, power, yin, bikrim and aerial. I've enjoyed all forms, but especially vinyasa and hot power. I was a relatively competitive athlete as a teenager; I played on a Division 1 Washington Area Girls Soccer travel league as a mid-field and defense team player for about 4 years. I not only learned how to be a team player in a competitive environment, but also what it's like to compete for 2 teams and 2 coaches (my high school team and my travel team, at the same time). I was very hard on myself, always striving to make the cut - proving to everyone I was worth it. I'll never forget the Summer after my Sophomore year, when I practiced sprinting out in the alley of my Washington, DC home every single day, non-stop, to make the sprinting time required to be able to make the Varsity team. I realized back then that I was more of an endurance athlete than a sprinter, but that didn't matter. I didn't end up making Varsity my Junior year, but did become the captain of Junior Varsity, leading on my fellow teammates to victory (which was another challenge in itself). Senior year, I realized the sport I so dearly loved and was striving for a College scholarship in, was more political than I ever knew it to be, completely ruining my drive to continue to play. I didn't want to have to fight for myself when I knew what I was capable of.
Moreover, I realized later on when I got to College and joined my first yoga class, that that same exact high adrenaline rush I got from playing soccer, as well as the relief it gave me, was the same for me when I practiced yoga. When I first started practicing yoga, I felt such an awakening and reassuring feeling when I could breath through the movements of the various postures, especially in a hot yoga class (which I was used to dealing with when playing soccer in the Summertime heat). And then when I first went to a yoga class with music (and still to this day), it was a whole other discovery that I so enjoyed - a particular beat playing in the background (a lyric that really hits the spot flowing from one posture to another), everything that you thought mattered, is gone. Never mind the surroundings, the focus is on the breath and flowing through the postures, connecting the body with the mind - it was a discovery that I had never known. Since this realization, I knew I wanted to continue to practice as much as possible and learn more about the meaning behind yoga. When I got to the real world after College, yoga was the only way I could stop and listen to myself. After 6 years in the corporate work life-style, it took about 2 years of me seriously thinking about it, leaving every thing I had ever known and planned for, to finally sign up for yoga teacher training in Costa Rica. It was as if God, or the higher universal soul (whatever you believe in as the higher power), stripped me from my normal planned-out life, completely illuminating everything, so that I would have no commitments to become a yoga teacher. It was all meant to be...I knew I needed to leave my job - I was only in it for the money; I knew I was pushing things with my 5 year-long boyfriend - my gut was trying to tell me something. All within 2 weeks, everything that I had ever known was gone, completely vanished....except for my love for yoga.
I am forever grateful for the higher power, universal conscious, to have pushed me, my individual consciousness, to do what I had been wanting to do for a long time. Learning all about yoga and the philosophy behind the practice has gotten me even more excited about my daily personal practice, and within that, teaching others what it's like to get that adrenaline rush that I so enjoy every single day, when connecting the body and mind with the breath. It's not only the adrenaline rush, it's being in the present moment, and the rush to get closer to the True Self.
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