During college, my friend and I decided to become exercise partners. We signed up for a Yoga/Pilates fusion class. I figured the class would be a way to add variety to my exercise routine, and that surely the Pilates portion of the class could still give me a workout.
With each passing class, I felt more lifted and elongated. It actually felt nice to hold the stretches longer than what I normally did for exercise warm-ups. My muscles thanked me for those deep stretches. Yoga wasn’t so bad after all, so I started to dabble around with yoga in various places.
Surfing the web one day, I discovered a tippr deal for a month of classes at Tough Love Yoga in Atlanta, Georgia. (I encourage you to check them out. The ladies and their classes are truly fantastic.) With Tough Love, I felt challenged in yoga for the first time. Classes weren’t just about simple stretching anymore.
The instructors would teach us variations to the poses, and I would want to stretch, stretch, stretch until I could get to the most advanced poses. Classes would get intense!
There is also a component to yoga that other exercises do not provide for me: Mind, Body, and Spirit awareness. The breaths matched with the movements seemed to rid my mental clutter and leave me with clarity of mind. With each pose, stresses and worries melted away. I was also more in tuned with my body. I felt rooted, centered, and closer to the earth. I felt awareness in both my physical body and to the world around me. I realized that yoga was exercise- exercise that nourished my entire being from the inside out. In short, Yoga made me happy. It filled a cavity in my soul each time that I practiced.
Eventually, my tippr deal ended, and it one very, very sad day. I am, however, eternally grateful for those classes because my practice in that studio ignited a flame inside of me, deep down into my soul. As a yogi, my soul is alive.
