I though that I would take the opportunity to write about what exactly Yoga and the journey means to me. I often talk about what it might mean to other people; healing, inner peace, all the things it can bring to your life etc but what does it actually mean to me. I guess the truth is that its constantly changing, I have practiced yoga on and off since my late teens and it has meant different things to me at different points in my life. But there is one thing that has been consistant and that is that once I started I never really stopped. There is not so much a continual timeline from the first class I ever took but there is a definite meandering path from then up to now, and its goes something like this:
I was probably about 17 and I got into the habit of tagging along to the gym with a friend of mine. She was an ardent member, I was more pay-as-you-go. She used to do these bootcamp style classes and loved them but when she tried to convince me to join her, I didn’t think it would be for me. Desperate to get me to come to a class, we decided to try Yoga. I only really agreed because I honestly thought I wouldn’t have to do much which is decidedly more my style. But I actually really enjoyed it, my friend not so much, she never came to a class again, but I found that I kept going back. And I kept going back for a couple of years. I remember there was a time when I started attending a daytime class, it was after I dropped out of college and started a full-time job in retail that afforded me a day off during the week.
There I was, 18 years old, among a sea of voracious grey-haired retirees, far stronger and bendier than me. But why was I going back? At that time, I had very much begun to re-explore Paganism and the books I was reading all advocated meditation to connect with spirits and so on. There was definitely a fascination with the spiritual side for me, and I found that the Yoga class was ticking that box at that time – it was teaching me to meditate. I wasn’t particularly worried about the fitness side of it, (to be honest I’m still not today,) that was always something of a residual benefit.
Fast forward a little bit to my university years. By this time spirituality was tossed to the wayside in favour of making friends and experiencing Uni life. But even then, I would still make it to the to the odd class and got a bit of a reputation as ‘the one who does yoga’. However, it wasn’t until I left Uni at 22 and started working full time for a cosmetics company that my semi-daily practice began in earnest. Interestingly, my draw back to yoga at this point was not spiritual but rather to keep myself in shape and keep up with all the beautiful people who worked in that industry – one I never felt I fit into. That was the reason but once I started back up again, I fell quite easily back into appreciating those moments on the mat as times of introspection, getting to know my body.
Not long after that, a few years into my marriage, I fell pregnant but sadly the pregnancy was not to be. After that, starting a family became my top priority and, conversely now I think about it, my yoga practice became extinct for a good few years. After my son was born, I did get back into it but this time the fitness aspect was top of the list. I was determined to get my battered body back into shape and yoga was just what I needed, I could also do a rather convenient class in the middle of the day and take the baby along too, it was great! After one of the sessions the teacher came up to me and asked me if I was a yoga teacher, I said that I wasn’t but to be honest it had been something that had crept into my mind once or twice.
My relationship with yoga was changing once again. I had my second child three years later and began attending the OmYoga show in London, I have literally been every year since then (except 2020 when it wasn’t on for obvious reasons.) Teacher trainings were cropping up on my radar but it wasn’t until I had my third baby and was feeling utterly lost in my life that I finally bit the bullet. It was quite sudden and random, but my husband saw that a yoga studio in Kingston was running a YTT course, it had already started but maybe I could enquire about the next one. I sent off an Email and they got back saying that because of Covid there had been a few drop outs and I was welcome to have a space and make up the missed modules in a few intensive weekends. It was a lot of money to fork out, but my husband supported me and practically insisted that I do it – the alternative was to go back into another horrible retail job once my maternity leave ran out.
Now, yoga was about turning my life around. I had spent so many years in retail, in an environment that I personally was not fit for and it had left an emptiness in me that, coupled with post-partum depression that made me fear retuning to work. So fearful in fact that the thought of it made me feel sick and I felt like I was living on a ticking time bomb. The course fell at exactly the right time for me to hand in my notice declaring that I would not be coming back, and I would be qualified by the time I received my last payment. At this point in my life yoga was my saviour, and I haven’t looked back since.
Now I combine yoga with other modalities (Tarot and Reiki specifically) but it has become my career and I have found a love of teaching that was quite unexpected. Throughout all the ages that yoga has been around, it has grown, adapted and morphed into something that means so much to so many people. These days my relationship with yoga is one of exploration as well as practice and teaching, an academic pursuit even, that facilitated my movement back to Journalism and writing which I studied at university. It has opened so many doors for me and allowed me to meet so many amazing people along the way – and it will continue to provide for me, just as it will for you, in whatever way that needs to.
Photo credit: Nadia Townshend.
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