My Yoga Timeline - Chapter 1
One of the earliest yoga asana pictures of me I could find. Carolina Beach in 2008.
My fifth grade kid is studying timelines. How to read them and what events might leave enough impact to denote a bold period on one’s timeline.
It got me thinking about my own timeline — and more specifically as relates to my career as a yoga teacher and small business owner. It’s been anything but a straight, smooth path.
For ease I’ll begin the timeline in November 2004.
At the time I was a researcher for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). After some early special election wins that cycle, we suffered a lot of losses (including John Kerry’s presidential bid). My research position had left me deflated in the final months where my main job became fact checking the negative ads the DCCC ran against the Republican candidates. And I knew I didn’t have the same gusto and drive to keep going in the campaign world that I saw in many of my colleagues.
So as everyone wondered where they might land next or if they’d stick with DCCC for another cycle, I started daydreaming about attending a yoga teacher training.
At the time I only took yoga classes sporadically and hadn’t found a home base, but I knew there was something in it for me to pursue. I was seeking a spiritual practice that matched my physical intensity. I was also teaching cardio dance and body flow (a blend of Pilates, yoga and tai chi) at Gold’s Gym in the evenings. It was fun, it gave me an outlet from politics, and helped me pay the bills.
Good researcher that I was, I bought an issue of Yoga Journal and meticulously laid out the pros and cons of the various immersion style programs that were advertised in the back of the magazine. I chose the Living Yoga Program due to the blended approach. Also because the 9-day immersion meant I only had to take 5 days off work as it started on a Saturday and ended the following Sunday.
The first 100 hours of the program were held immersion style at an ashram in Austin, Texas. It was yoga, lifestyle and learning from pre-dawn to late evening. Students then returned home to attend and be a mentee within classes in their community (60 hours) while completing a thesis project (20 hours) & self-study anatomy course (20 hours).
I applied and was accepted for the January 2005 session. I flew to Austin late on a Friday after work. My parents live in the area, so I got a quick visit with them before being dropped off for the program start on Saturday. That Monday I got a call from work that I was being laid off (happy vacation) and on Tuesday I got a call with some very difficult family news. I spent a day fully sidelined with emotional distress and then decided this was simply a part of my process and a dived back into the study.
In Light on Life by BKS Iyengar he says that the goal of yoga is liberation. And that liberation lives within each of us so to attain we must peel away sheath by sheath to reach the core. Yogis call these layers or sheaths, kosa (often spelled kosha). The outermost is annamaya kosa, the physical layer.
That’s why I went to the training: to peel that very outer layer, to learn the poses, the shapes, and play in the physical body. It’s a wonderful way to begin accessing the gifts of yoga, as evident by the abundance of asana practitioners today. But when those emotional traumas hit me in the field of the training immersion it blasted me right through to my core.
A piece of my family felt incredibly shaky, and I would be returning to Washington, D.C. with a mortgage to pay, but no job. And yet I had touched the seed of liberation and I’ve known from that moment if I kept returning to the practice and stay true to myself that I’d somehow be ok.
And I always have been. When I got home, I quickly signed on with a temp agency and went from gig to gig for a couple of months before accepting a great full-time position at a lobbying firm. It suited me well and the hours left me plenty of time to complete my requirement for the yoga teacher training program. By the end of 2005 I was a fully registered yoga teacher and had picked up regular classes at a few gyms in town.
Over the next couple of years, I was a yoga teacher hustler. The average day had me up at 5am to head across town and teach a 6am class at Sports Club/LA (Georgetown) and be downtown for the desk job from 8:30am-4:30pm. I would dash out to teach back-to-back 5pm & 6pm classes at Vida Fitness (Chinatown) and have fingers crossed there wasn’t a metro delay so I could get to Gold’s Gym (Federal Center SW) to teach a 7:30pm class. Dinner was generally a power bar eaten clandestinely on the metro in route.
It’s kind of wild looking back. I didn’t have to do that. I simply wanted to. Before the end of that hustle, I had also worked at Edge Yoga, The Energy Club, Gold’s Gym Midtown, Gold’s Gym Van Ness, St. Mark’s Yoga, and probably a few more I’m forgetting. My then boyfriend (now husband of 13 years) used to marvel at the number of 1099s & W2s I filed each tax season.
The hustle served me well. I’m really good at what I do because I’ve taught thousands and thousands of classes. I taught old people, young people, and in between people. I taught athletes with great command over their physical body, and I taught intellectuals who were disassociated with their body. I taught complete novices, weekend warriors, and daily practitioners. Come one come all no health, injury, or perceived limitation. All stripes and sizes. And in a gym setting I tell you it was the norm to have every different stripe and size together in one class.
That was how I cut my teeth and still today informs my style of practice and teaching. I’m going to make you think and I’m going to make you work. There will almost always be something in class a student thinks too easy or too boring and something that is too hard or too wacky. I’m far more interested in inspiring a new way to do or think about something like triangle pose than I am about flipping us upside down. I look for ways to play and find access for everyone in the room. And headstands hurt my neck so who needs that!
Every dime I made for the first four years of teaching, I put straight back into training. I never stop wanting to engage and learn more. And it was one Yoga Journal Conference I attended in New York City in 2007 that crucially shifted the trajectory of my yogic journey.
That’s to come in Chapter II.