My Yoga Story

My yoga journey actually started about 20 years ago 🤯 In high school, my brother just got back from bootcamp or a deployment and he took me to the mall to buy anything I wanted! I got a yellow Sony CD Walkman and a instructional yoga book 😄 He was like are you sure that's what you want? "Of course!" I replied... I never opened it until last year 🤣

I don't think I took an actual class until grad school. I had a TeXercise pass and actually went pretty regularly for at least one semester. After that I would take a few classes here and there. I enjoyed it because I'm somewhat naturally bendy so I looked like I knew what I was doing on occasion.

2018 kicked off my one-third life crisis. My ex-husband and I had just decided to take a break from trying to conceive after five years. He said, "Maybe God has a different plan for us." And you know what... He sure did! I embarked on an adventurous year of trying to find the meaning of life basically lol!

One of my first search results led me to an interview to be a cleaning lady at a gym 😅 I think I would have been paid with a gym membership. I didn't get the job 🙄 In fact they hired the girl that interviewed before me and I'm pretty sure they forgot I was coming in.. super awkward but blessing in disguise! The next day I called about a social media manager job at the local yoga studio. The owner said they already found someone but then called back two minutes later and invited me to interview!!! Thankfully this job was paid in unlimited yoga and actual money.

That's when I began to fall in love with it. I started going go class at least 2-3 times a week. I learned so much not only in class but researching for captions to post on their social media. I got stronger, learned to breathe and be still, met wonderful people, etc. With my year-end bonus from my full time job, I enrolled in teacher training that summer. I went through the four-week intensive training while I was five months pregnant 😅 I started to teach Mindful Movement and Meditation with Meagan on Mondays ha! Then good ol Covid came along and shut everything down 😕 Other areas of life took over and yoga slowly faded away. I taught online a few times, but it just wasn't the same.

Last summer I joined The Beauty Boost and I absolutely love the organization - doing various pop-up events at different locations with various vendors. It was part of the inspiration to start Sweet Escape. I wanted to teach and do all the things I love but I'm not as flexible and reliable as I used to be. I needed an outlet to teach on my own terms. My goal is to do one pop up a month for now and hopefully do more over the next few years 🤞 Five-year plan is to have an event space 😍 but until then I'm enjoying building the brand and figuring things out as I go ✌
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SO! That is the history of my yoga story but what I really wanted to share  with you is what I learned over the last 20 years (lol ok more like five but still...). Here is what you need to know about yoga and how you can benefit from giving it a try:

• Yoga is stretching for your body AND mind. Yes, I suppose yoga could technically be considered "stretching" but I really hate that term because it is SO much more than that. There are actually EIGHT limbs of yoga and asana (poses) is just one of them! Asana is what most people think of when they picture yoga.  The word "yoga" literally means linking body/movement to breath - not always as easy as it sounds. Being present, being mindful, being aware of your body/breath/mind/thoughts. You do not have to be flexible to practice yoga. You simply need to have a mind, body, and breath to benefit from the practice.... and you never know, you may become more flexible while you're at it.

 

• Yoga makes you less crazy sometimes. Yoga is not for calm, peaceful people. It is for crazy people that want to make a conscious effort to be more calm and peaceful. If you feel crazy (meaning busy, tired, worn out, burnt out, angry, short-tempered, defensive, etc.) at times and you want to remain crazy, yoga is not for you. But if you want to try to learn how to alleviate the never-ending "monkey-mind" of being reactive, then maybe give yoga a try. It does not eliminate your crazy but it will help you become more aware of your nervous system, allowing you to work on regulating it, and eventually/hopefully becoming more at ease in your mind/body.

 

• Yoga helps you calm the fuck down. You can learn to be still. You can learn to slow down. You do not always have to be busy (I also hate this word but that is another big long post). When you are able to slow down, you can think more clearly, you can react more slowly, you can become more understanding, you can become more kind/gentle/loving/accepting. We live in a world of constant judgement but slowing down allows you to take a step back, see the bigger picture, and enjoy life a little more. You don't have to live in fight or flight (sympathetic state of your nervous system).  You can live in a parasympathetic state of calm.

• Yoga does not replace your religion. Although yoga has been linked with Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, you can still be a Christian (or any other religion) and practice yoga. Yoga is not sacrilegious. "Yoga does not adhere to any particular religion, belief system or community; it has always been approached as a technology for inner wellbeing. Anyone who practices yoga with involvement can reap its benefits, irrespective of one’s faith, ethnicity or culture." "Yoga is essentially a spiritual discipline based on an extremely subtle science, which focuses on bringing harmony between mind and body. It is an art and science of healthy living." 

 

• Yoga improves other areas of life. When you begin to feel the benefits of a healthier mind and body, you will naturally want to improve other areas of your life - relationships (removing toxic people and finding others that have similar outlooks), diet (being conscious about fueling your body with good stuff, drinking more water, etc.), outlook and more. In fact, I see so much correlation between yoga and Christianity that I feel they go hand and hand and both help you grow in the other area (again, a post for another day).

Yoga doesn't make you perfect (although some might say you come close LOL jk jk). For me, it was the ultimate first step toward self-helpery. My motto has always been "constant improvement". I love learning, growing, changing, evolving, but yoga was a game changer when I started to see how it affected every aspect of my life outside of class and off the mat. I feel like so many people spend their lives flying by the seat of their pants just trying to survive. Yoga and life itself is such a journey. Just when you think you made it to the next level of understanding, another breakthrough is coming. I don't practice asana everyday but the fundamentals of what I've learned though going to yoga class has carry though every day. 


PS I still get annoyed at people and yell at my kids on a regular basis but I can only imagine how much better I am at life now haha!