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Most people are surprised to hear that I consider myself a
yogi. When I say “yeah, I practice
yoga!” people look at me like I’m stupid. It kind of bugs me because they look
at me that way because I don’t look like what people typically think of when
they hear about someone doing yoga….sorry not all of us have a gap between our
thighs. I’m not skinny in the slightest
sense, and for the most part, I’m okay with that. I do want to lose weight for the mere fact
that I need to be healthy, but in general I’m very happy with whom I am. Something that probably doesn't help this is
that I eat meat and I don’t eat organic.
It isn't something that has been on top of my list of things to worry
about. Should I, probably, but I am too
worried about getting my other eating habits under wraps. I’ll admit it, I’m not the healthiest
eater. It’s also probably because I’m
not a hippie…but then again not all of us are. (However, it is okay if someone is considered a "hippie.") You probably won’t see me in yoga pants unless I’m practicing…Honestly,
you probably don’t want to see me in yoga pants unless I’m practicing, and
maybe not even then. Actually, I never
even owned a pair of yoga pants until recently; I always just practiced in
shorts. Just in general, I don’t look
like the typical yogi.
Recently I haven’t been the best yogi ever…I haven’t been
able to motivate myself to practice in about a year, and I can’t really afford
classes but every now and then, so I've only been to two of those in the past year. (This will be changing I hope!) Because of this I have to practice more at
home…which means I need to be more disciplined than I had to be when I was
going to class. There are so many
distractions at home. I just have to do
it.
So how did I start practicing? I actually started when I was 13 after
reading about Sun Salutations in a Cosmo Girl magazine. I've always been overweight being 188 lbs at
the age of 12-13, and this promised that I would lose weight. I did the Sun Salutations a few times, but in
general it didn’t stick until about a year later. I know 13 is young for this, but my first
exposure to yoga was when I was more like 5.
My aunt and uncle used to own a little store in the town I grew up
in. My grandmother would wake up super
early to go make biscuits to sale and open the store. Every morning while we would get ready I
would watch what we called the “Butt Woman” on PBS. Years later I would realized that it was
Priscilla Patrick, a yoga instructor who lives in Columbia in case you were wondering.
Well not quiet 10 years later is when I started doing it a
lot more. My family was going through a
tough time. I was going through a tough
time. I still had that old Cosmo Girl
lying around. I divulged myself into
doing those Sun Salutations. While I was
out of school I did them sometimes all day, every day. When I went back to school I did them every
morning. Usually it was only three of
them, but I did them every morning. I
dropped down from 188 lbs to 150 lbs in that year. Eventually through high school I got my first
job and got into other things and my practice eventually dwindled to not doing
it regularly. However, during that time
it made me feel so much better. I don’t
know if it was because it kept my mind off of things or if it was because it
made me find a peace in a time when there was none.
When I started college I wasn't practicing near as much as I
probably needed to, but I was maybe one a week.
During my sophomore year I dropped into a really difficult depression
and I signed up for one of my first yoga classes in college as a leisure skill
class. The yoga class did help me some
mentally, but I was still felt completely out of it. What it did do for me is cause me to want to
look into where yoga comes from. You
know, what is yoga?
A year later I signed up for another yoga class. That class changed my life. I knew from previous research that there were
a lot of spiritual things that went with practicing yoga, but I didn't have any
clue what that really meant. This next
yoga class I had signed up for was taught by someone who I have grown to look
up to and adore. She helped me learn how
to bring the peace back into my practice that hadn't seemed to be there
before. The rest of my college years I took
two more classes from her and I have developed a relationship with her.
So where am I right now when it comes to my yoga
journey? I haven’t been practicing a lot
at all. Well I don’t feel like I
am. Right now I feel like if I’m not
practicing regularly, there is a reason.
I can’t pinpoint the reason though.
It’s not necessarily a laziness thing.
I will put down my yoga mat and just stare at it. Then I may lay in savasana for a few minutes. Hey, maybe that’s all I need to feel
centered. However, I do practice more
than I realize. It’s kind of developed into
a practice that I do throughout my day.
For instance, when I feel l need a good back stretch I may do a down dog
and cobra or a forward bend. If it’s my
lower back, I’ll do child’s pose. I've
been having pains in my hips and it helps when I do pigeon to stretch it out. When I’m on break at work I mediate sometimes
so I can bring myself down so I don’t feel like screaming. (My job can be way too stressful
sometimes.) So I guess that even though
I don’t have what you call a regular practice, I do have yoga integrated
throughout my life, and I’m okay with
that.
What does the future hold for yoga? I have no idea. Maybe one day I'll become a yoga instructor. I love yoga and I would absolutely love to become an instructor, but it costs a lot of money, so I'll just have to see what's in the stars when it comes to that.
Namaste,
Kat
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