One of the main reasons I started this blog was to share my yoga journey. This post is dedicated to just that, my journey with yoga; the past, present, and future. There are not yoga tips and tricks in this post. It’s simply a deeper look at how yoga has played a part in my life.
My Yoga Journey: The Past
I took my first yoga class when I was in early elementary school. Somehow I found out about a community education yoga class that was being held at the senior living center near my house. I really wanted to go, so my mom signed me up. For several weeks, my mom would drop me off for the hour class.
Most of the students in the class were older than my grandparents. I honestly don’t remember it bothering me that I was 70+ years younger than everyone else in the class.
Although I had really enjoyed the classes, after the session was done I didn’t take another class for about 10 years.
In college, I would take the occasional class, but it wasn’t until my late twenties that I started having a very regular yoga practice. I eventually worked my way up to practicing yoga every day.
My Yoga Journey: The Present
Journeys of Yoga was started in April of 2016. In the beginning, I wrote some yoga articles and published monthly updates on how my practice was going. I did these updates to hold myself accountable for my practice and because I thought others might enjoy hearing about my practice.
After a year of doing these monthly updates, I decided to stop making them. I started feeling like they didn’t align with my yoga philosophy. I no longer needed to be held accountable for my practice, I enjoy doing yoga so much that accountability isn’t an issue. Another reason I stopped the monthly check ins is that every person is unique. I don’t want to give the impression that I think other people should have a yoga practice that looks like mine. Yoga is a personal practice and I just started feeling weird documenting and sharing out every month.
In 2016 I also started taking regular classes from Gena. Her strength, flexibility, and love of yoga were really inspirational to me. I started to grow as a yogi and decided to go through yoga teacher training. When I first decided to go through the training I was only doing it to improve my own practice, not to teach.
Starting to Teach Yoga
However, before my training even started my ideas of teaching yoga started to change. I began asking Gena about teaching. She had been wanting to pass a couple of Vinyasa classes off to another teacher and asked me if I would like to take them. I couldn’t let the opportunity pass me up, so I took the job.
I was pretty nervous about starting to teach without any formal training. However, I felt comfortable in my own yoga practice and have experience teaching (I teach second grade as my day job).
Teaching yoga while I went through my yoga teacher training ended up working really well. After my training weekends, I was able to apply the things that I had learned right away with my yoga students.My students were very appreciative of the knowledge that I would bring back to them.
My eight-month training at Devenadi was amazing. I wrote a whole post about my experience going through the training.
Once I started teaching yoga and going through my training I became a lot better at having a home practicing. I got comfortable with doing yoga on my own without a video or teacher guiding me.
What started to suffer though was going to yoga classes. Until recently I had gone months without attending a yoga class. This has been a huge mistake on my part. I really started to miss the community and growth I felt from attending classes.
My Yoga Journey: The Future
In the immediate future, I would like to be better at going to classes again. Each week I am now going to one or two classes and would like to continue that and maybe even increase it. There is so much value from having a teacher to help me grow in my own practice.
I have also signed up for a Restorative Yoga training. I find that I am really drawn to Restorative Yoga. As a teacher and student of yoga, I think it’s important for me to keep learning as much as I can by taking classes and trainings.
Very recently, I started making YouTube videos and plan on making many more videos in the future. I also love blogging and will definitely continue making content on Journeys of Yoga.
Down the road, I plan on taking more trainings. Yin Yoga, Prenatal Yoga, and Somatic Yoga are the next trainings that I would like to do. Eventually, I will go through a 300-hour training to become a 500 RYT teacher.
Going on retreats and workshops, as well as teaching retreats and workshops is also something that I am very interested. Basically, the more yoga I can do, the better!
My yoga goal is to find balance in being a yoga teacher, having my own practice, and continuing to learn through classes and trainings. I really don’t want any of these to suffer and I know it will require me to be intentional and dedicated.
Thank you so much for reading about my journey. It’s nothing dramatic, but it’s what brought me to where I am today. Each person has their own journey with the thing that they are passionate about. I am so grateful that you have taken the time to learn about my journey.
Namaste,
Abby
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