What made you try yoga as a beginning student?
The first class immediately spoke to me. I had never heard of Iyengar Yoga but when I saw how methodical and precise it was, my tidy organized soul knew I had found my brand of yoga. The extreme focus on the alignment of the body to facilitate safe movement and maximum effective benefits, helped me take my mind out of the spinning corporate wheel and back into my life and my body. This was just the catalyst I needed to make healthy changes in my life, and yoga continues to improve my body and life in a multitude of ways. At the time, I was in a high stress job, living with high levels of anxiety, my father was dying slowly of a brain tumor and my personal life was a mess. My therapist suggested that I begin mindful practices to manage it all and she gave me the name of yoga studios to check out. The first studio I checked out was Eastern Sun Yoga. The owner, Lou Hoyt, had been an instructor since the 1980s so I figured she knew her stuff.
What kept you interested in yoga practice over time?
The Rewards. Iyengar Yoga has the best rewards program ever!
The more I practiced, the more I felt at home in my body.
Each class affected me in different ways: twists helped my lower back issues, standing poses made my legs strong, inversions made me overcome fears. As I felt better and better, I began a home practice. At first just randomly 5-10 minutes here and there. Then I decided to try a regular morning practice. I began to get up 30 minutes earlier than my normal time. This didn’t require any real missed sleep since I am restless just before I wake anyway. It didn’t require a plan or leaving the house or any special arrangements. So I cleared a small corner in an unused room and laid down a mat and used the wall and blocks as props.
Without an instructor to tell me what to do, I had to become my own teacher.
Do you have a favorite pose?
I have two: Sirsasana (head stand) and Savasana (corpse pose)
Corpse Pose may seem like an odd choice. But if you think about how I live with a heightened level of stress and anxiety, learning to become still was both a challenge and a luxury. When else did all my obligations pause allowing me to just “be” – basically never.
The lessons of how to become still improved my sleep and calmed my reactionary nature.
If you see someone in the pose it appears they are doing “nothing” but this is completely wrong. The body is processing all the benefits of the practice and letting them sink deep into your muscles, bones and memory. This remembering gets stronger with each Savasana and it becomes easier and easier to carry these benefits with you off the mat. The next thing you know, you are changing your life to be more aligned with your true nature, needs and wants and you can just “be” at ease in your everyday life.(MORE TO COME)