When I first tried yoga, I loved it. I thought it was incredible. But it wasn’t the exact same sort of “love at first sight” that many yogis feel. It was, looking back, quite literally the wrong kind of love. I was 10 or 11, and a dancer of eight years, so the reason I loved yoga was because I got to show every other kid in the class that I could do my splits and touch my toes. Take that, other yogis. I saw yoga as a chance to demonstrate my skill and my range of motion, and not much more. Doing yoga was not something that was a part of my daily life for most of my childhood. Rather, it was a once-a-week (if that) occurrence where I would pop down into my splits and pick at my fingernails to show just how above this whole stretching thing I was.
My God, I’m annoyed at myself as I write this.
It wasn’t until my traumatic knee injury that forced me to quit an intense dance schedule and propelled me instead towards yoga practice that I began to understand how much I was missing. It’s also possible that as I started college and my brain became filled with dozens of to-do lists and assignments, I experienced a real need for a part of yoga that I had never felt before. At the beginning of my sophomore year, I attended a free class on campus. The class was understandably cramped; my mat touched the mats of everyone around me, making it hard for me to demonstrate my flexibility to the highest extent. Instead, I was forced to simply do the movement and breathe. I didn’t feel much different at the end of class, besides being drenched in sweat, but in the following days I felt a strange longing to return to another class. After capitalizing upon free class after free class, I eventually decided to purchase a semester long class package so that I could continue to return to the classes that my brain and body so insistently pulled me towards. For a while, I saw the classes as just being my way to exercise. And while this was true, it took serious reflection for me to realize what was actually happening inside me. After each practice, my brain felt clearer, refreshed, and in a better space to function in the busy life of a college student.
As I continued to go to yoga, I fell deeper in love with the physical, mental, and emotional sensations with which it provided me. In the early days of my practice I would even get sad or angry as the class came to a close because that meant I would have to re-enter the world of stress that yoga helped me escape from. But constant practice helped me to realize real changes in my life that I didn’t even know needed fixing. The homesickness that had overwhelmed me freshman year was nonexistent. The anxiety and stress surrounding school that had resulted in countless mental breakdowns was reduced to a healthy sense of curiosity and determination. Even more exciting at the time, I felt such physical strength building up in my body, and in particular my leg which had undergone that career-stopping surgery, restricting my passion for dancing. For all this, I had yoga to thank.
After much thought, practice, meditation, and financial saving, I decided to enroll in a 200 hour yoga teacher training course. This would involve 10 scheduled hours of learning about or practicing yoga a week, with an additional approximately 38 hours of additional yoga classes over the course of the semester. It meant Sanskrit language quizzes, anatomy exams, projects, practice teaching logs, textbook readings, a final exam, and a practicum… the schedule was intense. But I was thrilled to enroll regardless. I love being a dance teacher because I love being able to provide other people with a way to be happier that I know to be effective. Yoga is no different. As humans, we inherently want to talk about and spread what we love. And as someone who has identified as solely loving dance for 18 years of my life, I finally realized that I also love yoga. As minor as this statement is, it feels weird to say, because dance has been my only outlet for so long. It has been my defining feature. My passion.
And I still dance a lot. I still love it. A lot. But this semester I am doing far more yoga than I am dancing, and I’m feeling this slight shift in identity as I do so. Learning the ropes of being a yoga teacher has changed the way I stretch, the way I teach, and the way I treat myself and those around me. I have learned so much from my teachers and from the students in my cohort about being kind to our bodies and our minds, and helping others do the same. I’m learning about alignment, and doing poses properly and safely. I’m learning about being inclusive to even the newest of practitioners. And I’m loving it.
I’m also very stressed. 12+ hours of yoga each week is exhausting, and I feel the repercussions both physically and mentally. At the beginning of each week I plan out my schedule to try and pack as many yoga classes in as I can so that I can get closer to hitting my goal. Every day I return home exhausted, feeling acne emerge on my sweaty face, realizing I still have hours of homework to do, not to mention a lot of practice ahead of me if I want to be a good teacher. As much as I really love this training program, I am anxiously awaiting the day that I graduate and can once again think of yoga as an outlet, a stress reliever, a strength builder, and a confidence booster. That is not to say that I don’t feel many of those things now, because I most certainly do. However, the academic side of yoga has begun to tire me out. It can be hard to love something that’s required and draining in all definitions of the word.
Still, I am so excited for the day that I can enter a yoga studio and teach a class and feel that same calming, confident, strong energy that I feel when I practice. That day will eventually come. And maybe I will be a little less stressed. Maybe I will have balanced my schedule. Maybe I will love yoga even more than I ever have. Until that day, I will continue planning my classes, studying my textbooks, and working on my alignment. Because to be honest, being tired really is a tiny price to pay for this incredible practice.
