Or should I say, “how yoga found me?”
I feel like there is so much to my journey behind finding yoga, so today, I’ll start with just the beginning. I remember taking my first yoga class, it was in June of 2019 at Corepower Yoga in Pasadena, CA. I wasn’t recommended to this studio by anyone, no one inspired me to try yoga, I simply was scrolling through Class Pass (a fitness app that allows you to access all different types of workout classes) on my lunch break and came across an evening class that just worked out for my schedule that day. So…I guess you can say yoga did actually find me…maybe I should just change the title of this post already, LOL!
Anyways, lets get back to it – I remember walking into the studio for the first time feeling something I never felt walking into any workout class. It was an intense sense of calmness that came over me, LITERALLY. For those of you that know me, “calmness” isn’t a personality trait most people would say I am. My brain is always going at the speed of light, and I am pretty much always doing something. So this was definitely weird for me – it’s as if somewhere within just knew I was about to receive a much needed change in my life. You can say my subconscious knew that in that moment my life was about to take a drastic shift (I will elaborate on that, don’t worry). There were two girls at the front desk who welcomed me to my first class, and I remember they had this energy about them that was just so inviting. It was extremely refreshing as a lot of other classes I had taken in the 8 years of living in LA, people are the furthest thing from welcoming. I begun to ask what I needed for class, and proceeded to tell them how I had never done yoga before and just thought to try it. Since I did gymnastics for 12 years, I assumed the class would be a piece of cake…boy was I wrong.
They directed me to where the class would take place, which was this heated, dimly lit room. It felt as I was walking into some secret escape – something about the energy was truly nothing I had experienced before. I placed my mat in the back of the room and waited for class to begin. Not even 5 minutes in, I realized, this is about to be the beginning of a deep healing journey, ultimately leading me to my life’s purpose. And then I thought to myself, “am I ready for this?” I didn’t quite have the answer yet, for a variety of different reasons. Somehow though, my car kept driving me to the yoga studio just about everyday following this first class.
What I learned in my first yoga class was this – sometimes our inner voice, aka our intuition, is so strong that it leads us to places our mind isn’t ready to go yet, or places our mind might know it needs to go, but won’t accept. Believe it or not, with all of this said, after my first class I wasn’t in love with the practice itself. Because let me make something clear, yoga with weights, in a 98 degree room (sometimes hotter) is hard AF and extremely challenging, both mentally and physically. My competitive nature, or ego as some may call it, was a driving factor to get great at this new hobby I had committed to. Outside of the obvious physical challenges, every class would awaken something inside me, which was another reason I wasn’t totally in love first. Each class brought about new thoughts to surface, that I otherwise would just neglect. You know all the uncomfortable things buried deep within that demand attention in order to work through? Ya…those are the things that were saying hello each. and. every. class.
Some days I really don’t know how I made it to the studio, it was like the magical force of my intuition just guided me there. What I did know was this – every time I made it to class and onto my mat, I felt as if another layer was being peeled back and bringing me that much closer to myself. Sh*t was HAPPENING guys, a major shift was occurring, and I was changing. I know, it sounds dramatic and quite ridiculous. I thought the same as I was living through it, I didn’t know what was happening half of the time, I just know today, I couldn’t be more grateful.
Without getting into too much detail (because there will definitely be another blog post on this), yoga saved my life. Yoga was the one constant that I had to hold my hand through what became the most traumatic, wildly chaotic and severely toxic relationship I found myself in at this exact time. The life I was living became my own personal hell on earth and I couldn’t control it. I didn’t even know how it got to the point it did. All I know is that I was emotionally exhausted, physically drained, and just completely disconnected from myself.
If you are going through a really hard time in your life right now, trust me when I say, there is a much greater reason for it. And although that reason doesn’t always appear right away, you must trust that it will.
… to be continued
Living Intuitively 