Excerpt from my book

How about an excerpt from my book "Foul Mouth Yogi: Essays on this Yoga Life" ?

Where It Began

I started yoga sometime around my pregnancy with my first-born son. He’s almost 13 now, but back then, when I was pregnant with him, I searched online, ordered a “Yoga for Pregnancy” book and DVD that turned out to be a pleasant Australian video and started my journey into yoga. 

After he was born and I was back in the swing of things, I slowly started working t.v. yoga shows into my days. I learned a lot from those shows, working my way through basic poses and into a minimal introduction to relaxation and meditation. 

I was on my way to becoming hooked though.

I started taking classes at the library; they were 90 minute explorations of basic poses with a bit of relaxation at the end. Then, I discovered a teacher who taught from her house and added her classes to my schedule as well. That teacher’s focus on alignment is what I now know as Iyengar-based. Iyengar is famous for having created ways to make yoga accessible with props. We used straps to help us keep our joints stacked or to keep our limbs from moving out of alignment. It was like a rodeo show, with all of us trussed up in our yoga straps like lassoed calves.

This teacher also taught me that it didn’t matter than I had trouble with meditation; she said to be patient and that my ability to sit with it would come in time.  

It did come in time but not yet.

She was my friend and my yoga teacher and unfortunately she moved away, back to the city (did I mention it’s not always easy to find a yoga teacher in a small town?) I went back to relying on the yoga classes I could get at the library and yoga t.v. shows. 

I decided to have another baby sometime after this and our house started to seem smaller.

Eventually, we moved to a nearby town to a house with a few more rooms and after baby two, I found another teacher there. She was a fairly new teacher whose focus was anatomy, balance poses and sun salutations. I still couldn’t find my way in meditation and often just left class before it began. I had no idea what the point of it was and headed out. I laugh to think of it now, since meditation is what it’s all about for me now. I attended her classes for a little while until I became pregnant with baby three.

By the time I had baby three, the local teacher stopped teaching classes but my husband was attending a new fight club in a town where one of his co-workers discovered my next yoga teacher. My mom watched the kids and off we went. My husband dropped me off and I walked or ran to his fight club after class.

(Side note: This was also where I started Pilates. I’m not sure I can say I am happy about that-wink wink. We’ll just note that and get back to the yoga. I still do Pilates today but I still don’t like to commit to admitting that.)

At some point in time, she said the words that were like magic for me. She said to lie absolutely still in savasana (corpse pose, during which we relax and meditate. I tend to meditate seated nowadays but beginners do better lying in corpse pose.)

That was it! That was the key. Keeping still helped me to still my mind. That was where it all began for me. I finally started to find that place of bliss everyone is always prattling on about. I would feel myself sink and drop and then rise up into this place of quiet bliss where nothing else mattered.

At some point in time, I started attending any workshops my new teacher offered, especially if they had anything to do with yoga philosophy. I brought home everything I learned to my husband. He found enough of a connection to what I was learning that he then started coming to classes with me. He started to change his perspective on life and his approach to it and we’ve never looked back. We take steps (sometimes many) backwards, but we try to take on the philosophies that our teacher has introduced us to as well as we can. We try to carry the calm of meditation into everyday life with us.

(Now, you’ll remember at this point that I am foul mouthed and caught between honesty & my unmasked self and detachment, so keep that in mind as you picture my calm self.)

How it happened, I’m still not sure but my teacher slowly introduced the idea of teacher training to me. Then she slowly talked me into taking it…coming from someone with extreme social anxiety and a fear of speaking in front of groups, this was a terrifying leap to take. I figured I could learn more about yoga, if nothing else. 

During my practice hours and before the first test (there is a sort of beginner teacher phase of the training I took, which leads into the full 200 EWYT-RYT 350 hour training), I attended a course on Yoga Sutras with my teacher’s teacher. 

I think this is where I started to realize that there was never going to be an end to learning about yoga. It is unending. There is always more. For me, this drew me further in rather than scaring me off. Call me a nerd but I love school. 

And that’s where you come in. That’s how you got into this mess with me. During and after my 200RYT, I took in so many books that it stands to reason that you should have to hear about how they relate to my life and maybe yours.

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