Do yoga and watch it change your life

When I was first learning yoga seriously five years ago, these were the words the teacher said. It was at the Y in Seattle, and I had wandered into the class desperate to find something to calm my nerves. I didn't have much hope for the yoga classes at the Y honestly. It wasn't a very spiritual room and there were no candles or incense. No nice wood floors and warmly colored walls. The only sound that resembled bells or chimes was the weights clanging together in the room next door as the muscle folks increased their bulk and strength. But I was feeling stressed out and fearful because I had recently given up my full-time, high paying job with MSNBC.com to go out on my own to photograph full time as a freelancer. Everyone thought I was crazy and many shook their heads waiting for me to fall flat on my face. I too was waiting for that to happen and would sit there filling with fear waiting for the phone to ring. Eventually that drove me nuts and so I decided because the Y was literally 1 block away, I needed to do something to help me find peace. I had tried running, swimming, biking, aerobics, and even yoga. I wandered into a class one morning and as I struggled through the poses thinking this isn't exercise? I am not burning off any fear or anxiety. Then she said the words "do yoga and watch it change your life." I remember thinking, "yeah right, am I missing something here?" I was skeptical and kept thinking that she was just one of "those" people. Throughout the next few weeks, something happened. I kept coming back. More because I didn't have anything to do at that time in the morning and needed to get out of my house. But as I continued to go and learn the poses, she continued to talk. She told me that my body changes every day and one day I will be able to do a pose and one day I won’t. She said that whatever is happening in my life is mimicked in my yoga practice.

She was right. I had days where I could do triangle pose and days that I couldn't. I had days where I fell asleep in corpse pose, and days when my mind was so gripped with fear that I couldn't let go of the thought that I was going to fail at my new business venture. But the thing that I learned in yoga was that everything is temporary. Some days are good days, and others are not so easy. I also learned about confidence and strength. When my body is strong, it echoes in my mind and emotions as well. I feel like I am strong and can take what the day brings. Over the past five years I have continued to do yoga. And recently I did a handstand on my own for the first time. For advanced yogis, this is nothing to brag about but for me it meant that I broke through a long-held fear. I have never been able to do a handstand, even as a child, I was afraid of falling. It was only a month ago when a yoga teacher in San Francisco said to me, just play with it. Just go to the wall. The word play seemed to unlock something and I went home and played. I did it! I did the handstand on my own. I was terrified honestly, but gradually I became more comfortable.

It sounds silly but my life is comprised of a series of uphill climbs and plateaus. The uphill climbs I love because I am learning, growing and experiencing new things. The plateaus I dread because they can last for a while and sometimes I just sit down and stop trying, or I have some kind of erroneous belief that I won't or can't ever do something. EVER. That is pretty limiting. Yoga has helped me move through this thinking. I realize that if I am hitting a wall in my yoga practice, I am probably hitting a wall in my professional, creative or personal world. But by the same token, I realize that if I am breaking through a fear and advancing my yoga practice, as I have done lately with handstands and headstands, then I am probably moving to a deeper more advanced place in my professional, creative, and personal world.

Do yoga and watch it change your life. It changed mine.