My journey in yoga began 13 years ago. I hated it. I went to yoga and compared myself to others, and judged my postures in the mirror. I mentally competed with myself and others. I could not touch my toes and I was very upset about it. I left feeling stressed, depleted and worse about myself. I had long been a “sports girl” , and I made the typical “error” of approaching yoga as another sport.
The intention we bring to the mat changes our experience of yoga. That intention was what I lacked in my first classes in yoga. I intended to get strong and flexible, but not necessarily with the intention of doing so with a calm, neutral, and compassionate mind. I hadn’t understood yoga in those first classes 13 years ago, and so, I missed all the fruits yoga offered. Hence, I returned to the gym where I could get flexible and strong much faster. Three years went by and I was quite content in the gym.
Then one day, everything fell apart, and here is where many peoples journey in yoga truly begins. Maybe I prefer to use the term “everything broke open”, many changes were occuring and they left me with a huge space in my life. Somehow the word, not the practice, but the word, Kundalini came to my mind. I didn’t know what it was but somehow intuitively I felt drawn to the strangeness of this word. I think I read the word in a Carolyn Myss book. Google told me there was a kundalini yoga studio 10min from my house that had just opened. So, I went to class; the class was strange; I loved every moment of it. I felt happy, I felt loving, and although maybe it lasted only some hours, the experience was enough to hook me. I signed up for unlimited classes. The studio eventually brought hatha teachers in. Hatha had been the original yoga that sent me running back to the gym, but everything felt different now. Now, I was practicing yoga. I had come to practice open this time, wanting to change something in me but not knowing how, I just showed up, and kept showing up.
As an athletic and competitive type, I needed a lot of help to “get inside my body”, to get in my experience, to fall into awareness. In Kundalini yoga the eyes are closed and there are no mirrors. The postures are not always easy but they are not generally “acrobatic” type postures. These factors are very helpful in diminishing the loud and obnoxious ego we all know. Hatha yoga of course also emphasises the internal experience, but simple factors like having the eyes open, perhaps, make it more challenging to shift the attention from the aesthetics of the posture or to avoid comparing if you are prone to do that.
After 2 years of consistent practice of both kundalini and hatha yoga, I went to India. I planned this trip in order to learn more about religions rooted in India. I planned to practice yoga there but it was not the main purpose of the trip. Somehow I ended up in a yoga teacher training, with the sole purpose of deepening my own practice. I had no intention of teaching at that time, but I would slowly be pulled to teach. My first experiences teaching were to fellow travellers in the Himalaya mountains. I never thought I would continue teaching in Canada, but I returned and I did. I even taught at the very studio I began my own journey in yoga!
When I moved to Spain in 2014 to a small town -Lebrija, Sevilla- my teaching was briefly interrupted. I had yet to learn spanish and not many people spoke english in Lebrija nor were they very interested in yoga . But I didn’t stop teaching. I met my good friend Laura in Lebrija, and her and I practiced yoga on my rooftop terrace. In 2015 I moved to Almeria and there was a big expat community and also locals who did speak english. I taught on the top of my apartment every Friday morning that first year. Now 5 years later, I live in a beach front apartment with an in-home studio, but mainly teach classes on the beach (the classes are in spanish aswell now!).
I am a teacher, but I am also forever a student. In 2018 I completed Kundalini Teacher training here in Almeria. In 2017 I began practicing the Ashtanga yoga method: First in guided classes with Olga Ucles (Muladhara) and one year later I began the Mysore style of Ashtanga with Marit Schmeling (Yoga 8) . I continue training with Marit and also often refer to the teachings of Kino MacGregor online and through her books.
I love the structure of the Ashtanga method. It has given me a way to build a solid home practice. It took me so long to achieve a daily practice, and to commit to it. I cannot stress enough the importance of committing to a daily spiritual practice, be it yoga or other.
I can touch my toes now, it didn’t take 13 years but it really did take awhile; flexibility never came naturally to me. There are many poses I still cannot do, and there will always be. You don’t have to touch your toes to do yoga, although it is likely to happen one day not so far away. When it happens you will be happy, you should be, but when you do you will see it was never about touching your toes, it was everything you gained in the process of getting there.
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