Chapter 1: Beginning

I took my first yoga class in 2004.

I did not go willingly. ​A friend insisted on picking me up.

"After that," she said, "you can decide for yourself."

In that very first class, my reluctance melted. After the second class, my mind, body and spirit were asking for more.  

For years, I basked in my back-row spot in the yoga studios ... enthusiastically taking in the experience and relishing it all for myself. In 2014, something shifted. Not only did I desire to take my own practice much deeper, but I also felt inspired to share the amazing gift of yoga with others.

In Spring of 2016, I completed my 200-hour teacher training with Kia Miller, founder of Radiant Body Yoga, at the Himalayan Institute in Honesdale, Pennsylvania. I cannot say enough about the depth, challenge, rigor, and richness of this transformative immersion. The instruction and dedication from Kia Miller, Tommy Rosen and Stephanie Crochet surpassed all my expectations. The collection of 15 other beautiful souls enrolled with me continue inspiring me every single day. 

For me, teaching yoga feels like coming home . . . coming home to my best self while
sharing all that’s possible with others.

​Throughout teacher training, I questioned many things:​
Am I strong enough for this?
How am I going to survive my teaching practicum?
Will I pass my final written exam? 

I NEVER questioned my decision to become a Yoga Instructor.

While in training, I picked up a book from the stack next to my bed and opened to this beautiful mediation on the word Beginning by the philosopher and poet, David Whyte.

Here's to the possibility of new beginnings and the courage to make it happen.  

Beginning

Beginning well or beginning poorly, what is important is simply to begin, but the ability to make a good beginning is also an art form. Beginning well involves a clearing away of the crass, the irrelevant and the complicated to find the beautiful, often hidden lineaments of the essential and the necessary.

Beginning is difficult, and our procrastination is a fine ever-present measure of our reluctance in taking that first close-in, courageous step to reclaiming our happiness. Perhaps, because taking a new step always leads to a kind of radical internal simplification, where, suddenly, very large parts of us, parts of us we have kept gainfully employed for years, parts of us still rehearsing the old complication story, are suddenly out of a job. There occurs in effect, a form of internal corporate downsizing, where the parts of us too afraid to participate or having nothing now to offer, are let go, with all of the accompanying death-like trauma, and where the very last fight occurs, a rear guard disbelief that this new, less complicated self, and this very simple step, is all that is needed for the new possibilities ahead.

It is always hard to believe that the courageous step is so close to us, that it is closer than we ever could imagine, that in fact, we already know what it is, and that the step is simpler, more radical than we had thought: which is why we so often prefer the story to be more elaborate, our identities clouded by fear, the horizon safely in the distance, the essay longer than it needs to be and the answer safely in the realm of impossibility.

Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words
~ David Whyte

More Meditations & Musings Coming Soon In Chapter 2 Of: Lives We Love​