My Yoga Journey
First off, I need to acknowledge that everyone's yoga practice is different and there is no one right way to go about it. That being said, it is always of the upmost importance to make sure you are moving your body in a safe and healthy way. I am excited to share with you how I started my yoga journey and the ups and downs that I have experienced along the way!
I started this journey in March of 2014 when attending University. To give you some context, my boyfriend at the time--now my husband--was out of the country doing his student teaching in the far away land of South Korea. Previously, I had spent a lot of my time with him and now found myself twiddling my thumbs in my 11x11 single dorm room. During some of this downtime I was perusing the rabbit hole that is Instagram and stumbled upon the yoga hashtag. This opened up an entire world unbeknownst to me full of men and women who could contort their bodies into astonishing and gravity-defying positions all while standing on their hands. I was impressed and inspired. I wanted to be able to do that. I wanted to feel that strong. So, I got down on my dorm floor and tried what seemed to be to be the easiest pose: bakasana, more commonly known by its English name of crow pose. To my astonishment, I succeeded (although without proper form or any knowledge of the pose aside from the aesthetics of it).
I immediately began devoting hours to my practice each day on my very cheap exercise mat. Yes, exercise, not yoga. Anyway, I saw pretty quick progress and I began posting on my own Instagram account as a way to keep myself accountable. I found a community through the yoga hashtags and practiced at home like this for the first year or so before ever stepping foot in a yoga studio.
While I was succeeding at the individual asanas, I had no real concept of a yoga flow or how important the foundations of yoga are to a practice. This all changed when I bought a (real) mat and attended my very first yoga class at Balance Hot Yoga Studio in Cedar Falls. If you are local, I highly recommend this studio! In these classes we focused on foundational flows and building strength and flexibility and I was hooked. I began attending 3-5 days a week and always left class with a sense of calm and confidence. I continued this throughout the year but when I graduated and moved away from Cedar Falls, I stopped attending a studio and went back to my home practice.
In the summer of 2015 I married my college boyfriend and we moved into a small apartment together. I still continued my practice but found myself slipping, choosing to relax with my husband rather than dedicate time to my practice. I still got on my mat a couple times a week but this was the beginning of the downward curve of my yoga journey. Ironically, my practice met its lowest point as my life met its highest. I became pregnant with my daughter in the summer of 2016 and I was very cautious as a first time mom. I don't at all regret slowing down my practice because I did it for my daughter and I did end up having a complicated pregnancy and an early delivery. Regardless, it was difficult to at least temporarily lose that part of me.
When my daughter was born in February of 2017 I was a little preoccupied, to say the least. I didn't take to motherhood very gracefully and found that I was always exhausted. Too tired for yoga, I'd tell myself. And even once I became used to this new role as a mother and the fewer hours of sleep that came with it I had been "out" of my practice for so long, it was difficult to get back "in" both physically and mentally.
This brings me to my current place in this ever expanding yoga journey. I have been going through a season of organization in my life. This may or may not have anything to do with watching Marie Kondo on Netflix... But in all seriousness, I've really been evaluating my life and deciding if this is how I want to live it or if there are some places that I could change. I want to be a positive role model for my daughter. I want her to have strengths where I have weaknesses and the only way to teach this is to show it. So I have vowed to do some personal work on myself in both body and mind. Conveniently, yoga encompasses both of these things! I haven't given myself a certain number of days to practice or an hour log or anything like that, but rather I am trying to practice intuitively. I am listening to my body and my mind and doing what seems right. That being said, watching reruns of Outlander on Starz may seem right more often than not so there is a little dedication involved as well! The next step in my yoga journey is to obtain my 200hr YTT (yoga teacher training) in the next year, hopefully. I'd love to be able to start teaching in a studio and sharing my love for this practice!
So no matter where you are at in your yoga journey, if you've just started, are on an upward climb, or have hit a low point in your practice, know that you are not the only one who has felt like this. Like any other struggle, you can acknowledge how you feel in the place where you are and then pick yourself up and do what you know is best for you in your season of life.
Namaste.
@uraveragemama
@lifewithtaylorj
I started this journey in March of 2014 when attending University. To give you some context, my boyfriend at the time--now my husband--was out of the country doing his student teaching in the far away land of South Korea. Previously, I had spent a lot of my time with him and now found myself twiddling my thumbs in my 11x11 single dorm room. During some of this downtime I was perusing the rabbit hole that is Instagram and stumbled upon the yoga hashtag. This opened up an entire world unbeknownst to me full of men and women who could contort their bodies into astonishing and gravity-defying positions all while standing on their hands. I was impressed and inspired. I wanted to be able to do that. I wanted to feel that strong. So, I got down on my dorm floor and tried what seemed to be to be the easiest pose: bakasana, more commonly known by its English name of crow pose. To my astonishment, I succeeded (although without proper form or any knowledge of the pose aside from the aesthetics of it).
I immediately began devoting hours to my practice each day on my very cheap exercise mat. Yes, exercise, not yoga. Anyway, I saw pretty quick progress and I began posting on my own Instagram account as a way to keep myself accountable. I found a community through the yoga hashtags and practiced at home like this for the first year or so before ever stepping foot in a yoga studio.
While I was succeeding at the individual asanas, I had no real concept of a yoga flow or how important the foundations of yoga are to a practice. This all changed when I bought a (real) mat and attended my very first yoga class at Balance Hot Yoga Studio in Cedar Falls. If you are local, I highly recommend this studio! In these classes we focused on foundational flows and building strength and flexibility and I was hooked. I began attending 3-5 days a week and always left class with a sense of calm and confidence. I continued this throughout the year but when I graduated and moved away from Cedar Falls, I stopped attending a studio and went back to my home practice.
In the summer of 2015 I married my college boyfriend and we moved into a small apartment together. I still continued my practice but found myself slipping, choosing to relax with my husband rather than dedicate time to my practice. I still got on my mat a couple times a week but this was the beginning of the downward curve of my yoga journey. Ironically, my practice met its lowest point as my life met its highest. I became pregnant with my daughter in the summer of 2016 and I was very cautious as a first time mom. I don't at all regret slowing down my practice because I did it for my daughter and I did end up having a complicated pregnancy and an early delivery. Regardless, it was difficult to at least temporarily lose that part of me.
When my daughter was born in February of 2017 I was a little preoccupied, to say the least. I didn't take to motherhood very gracefully and found that I was always exhausted. Too tired for yoga, I'd tell myself. And even once I became used to this new role as a mother and the fewer hours of sleep that came with it I had been "out" of my practice for so long, it was difficult to get back "in" both physically and mentally.
This brings me to my current place in this ever expanding yoga journey. I have been going through a season of organization in my life. This may or may not have anything to do with watching Marie Kondo on Netflix... But in all seriousness, I've really been evaluating my life and deciding if this is how I want to live it or if there are some places that I could change. I want to be a positive role model for my daughter. I want her to have strengths where I have weaknesses and the only way to teach this is to show it. So I have vowed to do some personal work on myself in both body and mind. Conveniently, yoga encompasses both of these things! I haven't given myself a certain number of days to practice or an hour log or anything like that, but rather I am trying to practice intuitively. I am listening to my body and my mind and doing what seems right. That being said, watching reruns of Outlander on Starz may seem right more often than not so there is a little dedication involved as well! The next step in my yoga journey is to obtain my 200hr YTT (yoga teacher training) in the next year, hopefully. I'd love to be able to start teaching in a studio and sharing my love for this practice!
So no matter where you are at in your yoga journey, if you've just started, are on an upward climb, or have hit a low point in your practice, know that you are not the only one who has felt like this. Like any other struggle, you can acknowledge how you feel in the place where you are and then pick yourself up and do what you know is best for you in your season of life.
Namaste.
@uraveragemama
@lifewithtaylorj
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