I don’t know why this journey of completing this yoga teaching course has meant so much to me. I don’t know why but my heart explodes at teacher training, I race to get to my yoga class, in the morning I want to practice and meditate and at night time I want to research and write about yoga and I simply feel like I am in my element teaching yoga and feel at home in a studio practicing yoga. When I land on the mat, I feel a sense of calm. I am able to bring my busy mind into my breath and into my body and move. I have always loved movement – running, swimming, touch footy, I always have energy to burn and I am restless if I don’t do something with this energy. I have always been a spiritual person and to finally find a practice that enables me to combine both spirituality and movement feels like a blessing.
Inconsistent yoga practice
I have been dropping into yoga classes for the last 13 years, so perhaps it was only a matter of time before I committed. It has only been in the last 4 years that I committed to yoga and a regular daily practice. I knew I needed something to calm my busy mind and come into me.
My first yoga class in 2005
I went to my very first yoga class at university in 2005. I was studying my Masters of Advertising, stressed out and in exam period. My Yoga Teacher was an ex-Advertising executive and asked me what I was studying at the time. Ironic that years after working in advertising and marketing for close to a decade, I have trained to become a Yoga Teacher like my very first teacher!
Yoga in Toronto
I mainly went to yoga classes at gyms and it was in Toronto in 2012/2013 that one of my best friends became a Yoga Teacher and would practice teaching with my friends and I. I practiced yoga at a studio and fell in love with the practice…again. “If everyone did yoga, the world would be a better place,” said Aimee. I agreed with Aimee and still do. Yet, illness came over me and I fell into what felt like a black hole with life on hold for a few years. It was in 2015 that I made the commitment to find my feet. Literally, I made a promise to practice more yoga and do more of what makes me happy and start on my path to health and wellness.
Yoga to heal my heart
Through yoga over the past 4 years I have been able to tune into the quality of my breath. To understand my body and sandpaper the edges of my sadness and illness away. To come into my own and develop strength and resilience I never knew existed within me. Perhaps that is why it means so much to me. On my sad days, I would land on my mat and the tears would fall and melt the pain. On my happy days, I would land on my mat and roll into poses I never I thought I would be able to do at my age. I always thought I was past my flexibility level, that I was too old to be able to touch my toes. And yet here I am touching my toes!
I thought yoga makes you calm? It’s turned me into an activist
BUT yoga is not about touching your toes or nor is it about flexibility or a fancy playlist or a beautiful studio. For me, it is about health and wellness, consistency, resilience and a peaceful mind. The energy I take from this world and the energy I give back. I have turned into a yogi activist. I thought yoga would make me more go with the flow, but it has made me want to protest and fight for what’s fair and right. It has opened my heart to new opportunities to learn and to open myself up to what could be.
I hope you love yoga
I hope you love yoga as much as I do and let it heal you, grow you, strengthen you and above all, bring you as much joy as it has brought me! Whatever you seek on the mat, may it find you and you revel in it!
Roxy xo