I was reflecting on my yoga journey recently.
I was 19 and a friend invited me to come along to a class. At that time, I was living in Camden at university. I remember walking into a packed out room in the students union and settling my mat down in the back corner of the room.
I wasn’t blown away by the class, in fact, I remember feeling stiff, awkward, and a bit lost for what I was supposed to be doing or what it was about.
Yet something about it obviously called me. Perhaps it was realising how disconnected I felt, and some deep inner knowing calling me back home to my body.
Whatever the reasons, it was the start of what has become a life-long love affair with this embodied practice, spanning over two decades.
Of course in the early days I was more interested in getting flexible, and achieving the poses!
In fact it makes me laugh to remember how I would cycle into Brighton Town Centre at 6am twice a week to do a two hour Ashtanga class in a very small very hot and sweaty room, before I then cycled off to work. Needless to say, I was full of ambition, trying and over-doing in my younger years -)
But as the years went on I began to discover that opening to the body's deeper natural intelligence was infinitely more interesting and satisfying than any external pursuit of the postures.
I began to learn how to listen to my body, and enjoy the paradoxes of the practice; that we can feel both light and grounded, vital and relaxed, strong and flexible.
When the kids were very young and the familiar routines went out the window, yoga practice was my anchor, the one thing in my day that I decided was non-negotiable. Even just being on my mat for two minutes, or if I spent the entire time in deep rest, or crying, it happened and it was a life line.
24 years on and it touches me somehow to realise that this practice and all that it encompasses has been my closest companion, helping me to become more present and sensitive to a wider and broader experience of my body and life, in all it’s vitality and tenderness.
Over and above anything my practice has become a form of mindfulness, where I can surrender the thinking mind and be more guided by what I feel within. There are infinite treasures to be discovered in our practice when we surrender the thinking mind!