My Yoga Story
Photo: My first yoga in the wild picture, taken by my Mum in 2007. West Coast, Ireland
Disclaimer: Memory is a funny and wiley thing. Everything I have recounted here is to the best of my recollection.
I didn’t find yoga, it found me. In the spring of 2002, my friend Kari asked me to go to some new class with her at the rec center of The University of New Hampshire (UNH) where we were both students. I don’t know how she found it, or if it was for class credit or what. All I remember is that I knew nothing about it before I walked in the room. This is not an unusual occurrence for me, I like to try new things, within reason.
In my pre-university years, I was extremely active and involved with sports; competitive gymnastics, soccer, springboard diving, softball, track, karate, and field hockey, colored my early life. I had what you might call a “movement habit.” Yoga as it turns out would fit right in with that.
The Rec Center called the Whit at UNH had always been a little intimidating to me. Though I continued to work out there, and try intramural sports and the like, I never really felt at home with my grunting peers who often seemed to be there for show. I was relieved when the yoga class was in a small classroom just off the entrance. The room was filled with a group 18 – 23 years (I’m guessing), and was pretty evenly split gender wise. There were no mats and there were chairs piled up in the corner, so that there would be enough space for us. I remember being nervcited (nervous + excited…yes I just made that up), and I remember being surprised when the teacher walked in.
I was struck by the man who walked in because he was (in my 20 year old mind) much older and had an egoless confidence about him, only it wasn’t that exactly, it was something I have seen only rarely and can only describe from my current vantage point, a peaceful groundedness. He was so unaffected. Even when people started snickering in class when he stripped down to very little clothing. He just went about his business teaching.
What I remember from that first class is learning how to breathe, what I know now to be basic gentle postures, and savasana (final relaxation). Being from an athletic background, it didn’t seem like much, but when I walked out of class, I felt different. I don’t think I could have described it then, but the class had deeply affected me, and somehow I knew there was something in it for me. Over the following weeks, I went back again and again, even as the class numbers dwindled. I finished out whatever the session was, and then went looking for more class after that. I tried a class in the closest big town/city, and it was completely different. That was my first exposure to “not all yoga is the same” aka there are different styles. The class I attended was much more athletic, more intense, and even though I got a lot out of it I didn’t go back to that studio because it didn’t fit for me. I felt very judged there.
On break from school, I headed home and found a local studio through my Mom who had also started practicing with a friend around the same time I did. The studio was the only one in the area at the time and for many years after that. I went to that studio while on break as much as I could. I didn’t know it at the time but, that studio would become my main yoga home for the following decade and a half.
By the time I graduated, and circled back around to the area, the studio had moved from its small one room space down the hall to a multi room space. As I settled into a job, I simultaneously settled into that studio and yoga. Not until years later did I realize how lucky I was to land at that studio. It offered a variety of styles and was focused on all the limbs of yoga, not just the postures. This was a true gift. It also offered a variety of teachers and I soon found one that was a personality match for me (an oft discounted item of importance when practicing), and I became a regular.
The style I was initially drawn to fit my patterning - athletic, high intensity, challenging, deep, and fiery. It wasn’t long before I was flinging my legs over my head in scorpion trying to touch my head. (There’s no “flinging” in yoga, but I didn’t know that at the time.) I challenged myself a lot and was eventually doing things I hadn’t done since gymnastics. It felt great, but what I didn’t realize was that it pitta’d my pitta as I like to say. (Pitta is one of the ayurvedic doshas or constitutions. If you’ve never heard of it, you can test yourself and learn more HERE). What I mean is, it made my fire more fiery, it made my over doing, perfectionism, and competitiveness worse, more intense. Even though my teacher regularly brought in yoga philosophy and meditation, I was all about pushing, which is the opposite of what I actually needed. It took me a long time to find out what I actually needed for a more balanced approach, a mix of meditation, gentle, restorative, with some vigorous as needed.
Enter Yoga Teacher Training (YTT) a few years later. I had noticed the advertisements for it at the studio and I was curious, but didn’t think I would enroll. I didn’t want to be a yoga teacher. The owner of the studio and the other teacher I regularly attended with both encouraged me to do the training and it was just what I needed to hear to do it. I did it initially just because I loved yoga and how it made me feel and I wanted to learn more to expand my practice. By that time I had dabbled in many of the other classes offered including restorative, which was still hard for me, so I knew there was a whole yoga world out there for me to discover.
There are a few distinct turning points or departure points in my life that I am able to see in retrospect and those 10 months of YTT were without a doubt one of them. In addition to the 200 hour training, I committed that year (to myself) to do whatever workshop or learning opportunity came my way at the studio, which is how I found Shamanic practices (which is a whole other story for another time). YTT ended up being a huge gateway for me. It led me to so many other things, including actually teaching yoga.
My training class was filled with 13 other souls, al at varying stages of their own yoga practice and life. We had people over 60 and two 17 year olds. Somehow, it worked, we became a tight knit group for those 10 months, learning from each other, sharing, going deep. Up until that point in my life, and still, it was a unique experience. We had guest teachers for certain modules, who I would cross paths with again over the years of my yoga teacher and practicing. We read, we practiced, we taught, we laughed, we cried and most of all, we learned A LOT. It was one of the first times that I considered the healing nature of yoga. As we went deep, I learned more and more about myself in a way that I am not sure I could have had I been doing anything else. The training challenged me to think about my entire world and internal world differently.
A month before training finished, the owner of the studio pulled me aside and said she had a class for me to teach, if I was interested. I was surprised for two reasons, one, training wasn’t finished yet, and two, I had no intention or plans of teaching. I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but I’m an introvert and standing up in front of a room of strangers and teaching felt terrifying. I wasn’t sure if I could do it or if I even wanted to do it. But then I remembered that for that year, I was going to try as many new things as I could, and here was the ultimate one staring me in the face.
Spoiler alert, I said yes.
In June of 2009, I taught my first yoga class to a room full of 24 people (a packed house for that room). I had recently turned 27, and my age was dwarfed by most of the people in the room by decades. I was freaking out. I think that first class was called Yoga for Strength, which meant it was pretty vigorous. I remember my voice cracking as I introduced myself. I remember being scared the whole time and doing it anyways. (Thank you to any of you who might have been in that first class. I treasure the support.)
Part of me never wanted to do it again and part of me did. The part of me that was a perfectionist, over-doer won. I taught that class every week and then soon many others. I subbed whenever a sub was needed. I took new classes if they were offered. I taught to 2 students, I taught to 15, full rooms and empty ones. Whatever I could do I did, all while working my regular full time job.
An interesting thing happened during that time, my full time job ramped up and got busier and more stressful at the same time that I started teaching more and more, and yep you guessed it, I burned out. During this time, as is so common when teaching a lot at the beginning, my personal practice suffered. I was barely going to class, or studying with the teachers I connected to. I was grinding everything out, and I was in a two years shamanic apprenticeship by this time also. It was pretty unhealthy now that I look back on it, but I was always good at putting on a steady, calm face, and getting to work without complaining.
By 2012, feeling overwhelmed, I started to drop my classes, slowly at first, and then altogether except for one free meditation I was leading. By late 2012, I had shed all of my classes and became a student again. People asked after me when they saw me in class, wondering when I was going to be teaching again, which I found curious because I had never really developed a following at the studio. People came to class, but it mostly seemed like people didn’t connect with my teaching. I was always very conscious of the age differential in the classes and I often wondered how much of a factor that played. There were a lot of factors why I wasn’t connecting, looking back on it, a big one being my own energy and how I felt about myself.
I took two and a half years off from teaching. When I started this teaching break, I didn’t think I would ever teach again. I thought it wasn’t a fit. A fun hobby to try, but nothing I was going to pursue in the future except for personal use. In 2013, I went through a lot of transition, giving up teaching, finishing my shamanic apprenticeship and then leaving my full time job and whole life to travel around the world solo (Check the Travel Blog for more on that).
By late 2014, I was back in the States, not sure whether or not I was staying or leaving again. So I went to my yoga. I thought I’d see if I could sub some yoga in the meantime. I emailed the studio owner to see if I could get on the sub list. In November of 2014, I taught my first yoga class in over two years to five or so students. That sub gig turned into a regular class for the next five and half years. A month later, the studio owner came to me and asked if I wanted a larger role in the studio on the business side. We had short interview and even though I had no idea if I was staying the country, I said yes, figuring I could help temporarily. Cut to five and a half years later and I was scrambling to put the studio fully online at the start of the pandemic.
I can honestly say that I truly came into being a yoga teacher in those five and half years. I learned a lot. I started small again, just one class and subbing, plus my duties on the business side. Organically, even though I was still doing some other work on the side too, my teaching expanded. I found out more about what I really liked to teach and what I needed in my own personal practice. It was a process of refinement (ongoing of course) in my teaching and as a person. As I came closer to what was aligned with me and how I wanted to teach, students showed up more and more. As my voice got clearer and my instruction more accessible, as I grew more confident, more people showed up. The more I taught, the better I taught, the better I felt.
As I look back on almost 20 years of yoga in my life, I often think I don’t know who I would be without it, but I do know I would be a completely different person. As I round the 20 anniversary of having yoga in my life, I’ll have equal time in my life with and without yoga. I’ll be at a yoga equinox if you will. As I reflect on that, I am struck by the many evolutions I have gone through as a teacher and a person, and the role that my yoga practice and teaching has played in every aspect of it. Even when I was wandering around the world in hostels, my practice was still with me. It is always with me.
Teaching is still challenging for me. I’m still learning. I’m still finding my voice. Moving online and going out on my own in 2020 has been a huge curve that I am still in. I can honestly say that when I started teaching yoga, I could have never imagined what it looks like today, or that I would teach how I do right now. I could have never imagined teaching online, or being on video, or being recorded or sharing my voice in all the ways I do. But here we are, at the beginning of a new chapter in my yoga story, experimenting and figuring it out as I go and learning the one of the greatest yoga lessons, non-attachment.
Thanks for witnessing my story!
