How Yoga Impacted Me

Yoga has been part of my life for the past 10+ years. So has doubt, anxiety, worry, and fear. Doubt in my purpose. Anxious in my body. Fear about tomorrow. At the time, yoga was an activity that felt counterintuitive to addressing any of these issues… issues that weren’t exactly identified as such at 19 years old.

My biggest fear was intimacy. There was something about being fully seen and known that scared me. The next decade was followed by pursuit of accomplishment and hyper productivity. My goal-oriented self told me to keep going, try harder and push past limits. I was overcommitted in all meanings of the word: with my volunteer efforts, at my corporate advertising job, and even within my social circle. As a result of years of this, pushing past pain signals from my mind, body and soul, I felt tired constantly and started to lose hearing to the voice that helped me discover these passions in the first place. I struggled to connect my cyclical thoughts with my ever-changing physical body and spiritual essence. My thinking mind dictated my life — and that is when my body become restless and spirit felt disconnected. As a lifelong believer and Christian, I would read promises of a “restful” and “peaceful” spirit, but I was far from experiencing that myself. I felt hopeless and inadequate.

There were a few constants in my life: faith, family and you guessed it — yoga.

So where did I go? To the only place where I felt myself, without expectation, responsibility and shame. My yoga mat. I did not realize it at the time, but that was the reason why I kept showing up. What started as a simple practice remained as a simple practice. Why? Because it was the one place where I wasn’t asked to push past my limits. I was simply invited to show up. Over time, I went from learning different asanas (or physical poses) to learning how to listen to my body and, after a while, eventually slow down my mind. I used to think that yoga was about mastering posture techniques, maximum flexibility and strong muscle engagement. I would watch others get into advance binds & balancing poses (I am still working on Crow Pose) but would only let that serve as inspiration. It was something to work towards, but also an invitation to accept where I was in that moment. Maybe it was the lifestyle that I was after, or the outfits... But rather, the result of consistent years of steady practice wasn’t a perfect body, a million followers, the ability to do the splits or an easy life – the result was building a relationship with myself.

What started as an inconsistent vinyasa practice turned into getting any time on the mat as possible during different seasons of life. From sunny beach yoga in between studying, to rainy day yoga sessions at the Shard in London, to courses at a local university and eventually exploring a regular practice at studios in Santa Monica – the where and how was not important. Early on I had the opportunity to organize a 6 week faith-based yoga program with a local Malibu instructor that focused on flow, movement and spiritual formation. From that moment I knew I wanted to continue this journey, for myself and others experiencing the same roadblock I was going through to experience connection and inner peace.