Yoga

What does that mean?  When I was first introduced to yoga it was through my PhysEd class in high school.  In that same semester I was also introduced to country dancing and aerobics.  

Yoga was just another fitness process or exercise to me nothing more, nothing less but that said I liked it.  So over the years off and on I “exercised” in yoga classes (and now practice, having taken a yoga teacher training program).  

Advice 

After traveling abroad–  Vancouver, Bali, Thailand, Toronto, Hawaii, New Zealand, Sydney, Calgary, Perth, Brisbane, Melbourne  – Enlightenment – on medical advice, in a desperate attempt to heal physical pain I was referred to yoga.  A finer prescription could not have been given and indeed I was permanently relieved of my pain.  

So I stopped going to yoga, sort of.  Something kept drawing me back to the mat.  Why? My pain was gone, I was cured so in my mind I no longer needed yoga and yet a part of me knew that I did and so my journey continued.  

Body

My body already knew what my mind did not and the craving for the mat was the only way that my body could convince my mind to go there, but once there I was at home.

There was comfort on my mat that I had never experienced before, it was slow at first but it grew.  

On the mat I could connect to myself, to the people around me, to Mother Earth and it was peaceful, joyful, painful, challenging, emotional but most of all it was safe.  It was safe enough for me to start to experience life so that I could actually experience life.

Now

Some, both then and now, will comment that the yoga that I and many others were introduced to years ago was was a butchered version, a disgraceful, commercialized version that strayed away from the true yoga.  

Maybe, maybe not but I think that yoga was needed by so many and the Universe put it in front of people in a way that they could accept it comfortably and then it grew.  If not for my PhysEd teacher I would not be on the mat today and that would be a terrible shame.

Yoga is the journey.

That is what coming to the mat is for me.