What is the Yoga?
Read on to find my answer to this question - at least for today.
As a yoga practitioner, it is both challenging yet vital to maintain my own practice outside of teaching. It keeps me nimble, empathetic, and relatable. I have no business telling students what to do with their body if I can’t honestly speak to it and have the empathy of experiencing it - not just the physical practice, but the mental challenge of it all, too.
This past weekend I took a class where I teach that the owner, Steve, led. It was a 75 minute Power Flow that shook out to be closer to 90 minutes - no surprise if you know him. That class brought me all the way back to my why. Why I have my personal practice. The prominent reminder of this specific style has helped me sharpen my mind, my humility, my discernment, my acts of choice.
My individual practice began when I was five years old. My grandfather was a holistic healer and spent time learning and practicing reiki, rolfing, chiropractics, Chinese medicine, herbal medicine, and more. He used to travel the world for this work. In fact, he was nearly never home. Because of this, he would send things to me in the mail via USPS. Boxes would be filled with a variety of things and no two boxes ever had the same compilation of contents. He would send books, supplements, oils to be rubbed on the chest or dropped under the tongue. One of the regular items in these boxes shaped me in a way that I wouldn’t understand for over two decades - VHS tapes of Yoga.
The tapes would vary in style and practice, ranging from kids yoga to slow flows, vinyasa flows, and everything in between. They were often filmed on a beach or somewhere outside in nature. As a kid I was always an early riser. Somewhere between 5 and 6 AM I would find myself awake and sparked by either curiosity or anxiety, sometimes both. My mom however was not an early riser. The solution to this misalignment was me finding something quiet enough to entertain myself while she slept a little longer (and as a mother I now completely understand and honor this flex, lol).
I would put a yoga tape in and approach the asanas as play - because that’s what they felt like to me. They felt like an interactive activity to get myself into my body, feeling what it was like to be in my body. Sometimes the practice would be as simple as instructing me to lay on my back and place my head on another person’s stomach and notice what it felt like for my head to rise and fall with their breath. My dog, Charlie, would lay next to me and I would lay my head on her torso and feel her body moving the waves of air in and out. I remember feeling like we were a part of each other.
My personal practice has evolved over the years. I grew into gymnastics and cheer and yoga always felt supplemental to the balance and core strength that were required to do those activities. Through high school and college my practice was more spaced out but it was always present in some capacity.
In 2014 I did my first hot yoga class at a local studio called Balanced Yoga Studio (now GIVE Yoga). I quickly fell in love with the heat. I hadn’t known what to expect going in so I booked a class right after I got off work, changed clothes and headed in. I was amazed at how much my body sweat, how challenging the practice was on my mind - it wasn’t comfortable nor particularly “soothing”. I had kept a full face of makeup on during that practice. Once class wrapped up, I chatted with someone in the lobby and I recall wondering if we would end up being yoga pals. That was until I walked into the bathroom and saw black streaks up and down my forehead and cheeks from the mascara that had been on my eyelashes. No new friends for me that day - HA.
This studio is where I got involved in hot yoga in a regular committed way as an adult. I never really tried to put words to how I felt about the practice, nor did I question what the classes could or were opening up for me inside. I was pretty focused on the physicality of the practice at that time. I had read a number of articles and reviews discussing emotional releases that yoga afforded people. I remember reading Glennon Doyle’s “Love Warrior” and her discussing going into her hot yoga studio and simply laying on the floor and sobbing at the end. I couldn’t comprehend this. That is until I had taken a couple years away from a regular practice and re-entered after having two babies, a broken marriage, and discontent in how I was (not) living out my purpose nor remotely clear on how to do so. I was given an unlimited membership to GIVE Yoga for Mother’s Day in 2019 and that marked an entirely new beginning for me in this practice.
I fell in love with a teacher named Parker, her style, her presence with her students. I recall laying in savasana at the end of one of her classes and tears streaming down the sides of my cheeks in gratitude to have the space to set my responsibilities down, step away, and understand what it was like to be in my body after so much transition, pain and hope.
Under great guidance, yoga began as a place for me to feel safe and rebuild trust with myself and my constitution, both physically and mentally. I eventually made my way to REWILD YOGA as I learned that the owner was inspired to open it by the influence Parker had on him. Since then, I’ve been more than hooked. It is my “way”.
The practice that REWILD YOGA offers is primarily Hot Baptiste Power Yoga. This specific practice was literally designed to stress the mind out. Holding challenging poses for elongated breaths in a 95 degree room at 50% humidity raises disruptive thoughts and feelings in the mind and body. Through commitment to this practice, I learned how to not only experience discomfort but how to settle down in it. Become intimate with it. Observing the way I formed opinions about what I was feeling and how those opinions became ruling attachments to my reality, my beliefs. How to calm my heart and my mind. Ultimately, I learned how to activate my own choices from a place of calm and truth instead of reactivity and grasping. This practice began on my mat and eventually grew outside of the studio walls.
I left my marriage. I left the job that wasn’t fitting the life that I wanted. I changed my choice and mindset around relationships that were not aligning with what was best for me. All of this was deeply uncomfortable. The discomfort never goes away, but, we can refine ways of sitting in it, finding peace in it and moving through it. This is what yoga has become to me. The physical piece is using poses as vehicles to make my mind and body struggle. Other “vehicles” for this could be different agitators in your life i.e. your toddler throwing a tantrum, your coworker bringing pessimistic energy into your space daily, sitting in traffic that is making you late, receiving the wrong contents in your takeout order. It’s how you show up as your mind perceives inconvenience. Hurt. Anguish. Even extreme happiness in some cases.
The practice I moved through this past weekend was intrinsic and challenging. So much so that I couldn’t have thought of a single other thing than being in my body for the whole practice. That was a gift. It reminds me of something a local teacher recently shared here.
“Your practice should be:
repetitive enough for you to notice the ripples of the mind
demanding enough for you to be present
humble enough for you to not get in your own way
simple enough for you to get bored
reflective enough for you to claim the clarity
honest enough for you to discern
effortful enough for you to catch the grace”
-Anastasija Katcyna
That is my why today. Recalling that I can leave all the bullshit at the door and take my mind somewhere else. Somewhere sacred, untouched, and honest. I can choose and practice detaching from what is causing me pain. Pain isn’t just physical. It’s anxiety, it’s depression, it’s rumination on things that have happened that sparked inner reactivity and possibly suppression. It is the physical twisting and wringing and cracking and purging of the energetically stored hurts and traumas out of the body. It’s the intentional massaging of the the chakras to release what is blocking us, blocking the pathway to our hearts and minds.
My why isn’t, and doesn’t need to be, your why. Some people practice for flexibility. Some to find community. Some to sweat out the toxins from a weekend that went off the rails. There is no right or wrong answer. As with all, I say it’s best to understand your attention and intention going in, so you can move toward something bigger than your current experience of existence.
