Every long-term love has a beginning.
This is the story of how I met Yoga! 🙂
As a kid I loved being active - but traditional sports were never my strong suit. Most of my friends in my neighborhood were athletes - my across the street neighbor actually held the NC state high school basketball record for 3-pointers for a bit. I kinda tried it all - and am super clear that my role was NOT on any field/court/ball.
I did however spend many years in dance - tap, jazz, ballet and acrobatics - gymnastics, and cheerleading. From the time I was 5 until I was 17 it’s what I did. DISCLAIMER: I wasn’t super good at any of these and no delusions of grandeur in this department either. It was fun and gave me something to do UNTIL…I got injured!
This side story goes like this: I was in cheerleading camp the year between my sophomore and Junior years - it was supposed to be MY year! I’d been working hard on my tumbling skills and felt really good about where I stood on the squad. We were trying a new entry for a stunt - yep, I was the one on top - and my spotter moved and let me hit the floor. OH - and there were no mats down on the basketball gym. She had one job - and she failed me. Out of instinct, I tried to catch myself. I landed on my right wrist and tailbone.
Yeah - never the same, and it started me on this path to healing. BUT first - A LOT of pain.
My mom took me to a doctor but he didn’t believe me and offered exploratory surgery.
Hard pass!
My mom even thought I was faking it until over a decade later.
I spent my first few years out of college in restaurants - hostess, server, bartender and eventually manager. I made some bad shoe decisions - a few times. But the low light was when I found myself unable to walk after a 16-hour bartending day in a new pair of flip-flops from Target. I remember waking up the next day, putting my feet on the floor, weight into my feet - and then FLOP - collapsed right into the floor.
I was 25-ish and my body HURT - all the time. I had numbness in my feet and a sharp OUCH in my low back. I started googling - all sorts of things. I was desperately looking for ways to NOT continue on this path. My haunting question to myself, “If I feel like this at 25, then how am I going to feel in __ years?”
No matter what rabbit hole of a diagnosis I went down - and I went down quite a few - all the paths mentioned YOGA as a potential path to feeling better. I figured EFF IT - what could I lose?!
I showed up at 12pm on a Wednesday to a little basement of studio - Yoga One - an unfortunate casualty of 2020. It was hot, and I had no clue what I was doing but by the end I was smiling and oh so grateful for that cold lavender towel. I remember enjoying the movement portions, but the part that got me was the teacher said, “You are not your crazy thoughts.”
Wait, what?
I ain’t NEVER heard nothin’ like that before, and I 100% identified with my thoughts ESPECIALLY the crazy ones.
It gave me something else to consider that I had truly never considered before.
I thought I was my thoughts, and if not then what was I?
What else was there?
It took me around 10 classes before I realized there was breath being cued and then the magic really started to flow. As a former asthmatic kid, learning to breathe was life-changing. Remembering to breathe has been a life-practice.
And the rest, as they say, is her-story. :)