Finding myself
Most of us go through these crazy stages of life, learning, growing, changing, becoming the person we want to become. Some of us get lost along the journey, others find themselves early on in life and embrace it. For me, I am somewhere in between there. I’m not necessarily lost, but I am also not found completely either. There are several aspects of myself that I do not enjoy and am finding hard to change or adapt to/embrace. One thing I know for sure is that I am a person who needs the company of others but struggles to find my people. There are very few people in my current stage of life that I talk to or hang out with. Where I used to talk to everyone and have many friends I now only have a small handful, if that. Its hard to find your people when your at that in between stage of who you are wanting to be and who you used to be. My journey have been long and there have been so many changes and growths along the way.
This post was a huge struggle for me because I keep wanting to point out my flaws and what’s wrong with me and not actually acknowledging my strengths and the reason for this post. Growth and change look different for everyone. Dedication and commitment as well. Most of my growth has been mental. It started with Reiki, advanced with Access Bars, and is continuing with Yoga. Healing wounds and letting go of negativity was my first step. There has been a pattern with me in every stage of my life. I have a tendency to only remember the traumatic or negative experiences in my life and struggle to remember the good and happy ones. This of course has created wounds and bottled up negative energy within me. My teenage years and 20s were a disaster. I was a complete mess and continued to make mistakes every step of the way.
Then I made a life changing, very large decision to break up my family. The initial decision was due to deceit and the realization that I was finding happiness outside of my home. My pain was bleeding into my family and I needed to break away. That was the start of one of the worst years of my entire life. But the pain and suffering I felt through that year awakened something else inside of me. It led me to the start of my healing and being able to start my journey in finding myself.
I cant say for sure I am where I am supposed to be in my life, but I can say that I am still at the height of my journey. There is so much yet to be discovered and learned. Sometimes I feel like I am wasting my life, but then I try and figure out why I am feeling the way that I do. The ups and downs and twists and turns almost make me feel like life is giving me whiplash. There is still so much I want to learn, discover, explore but I am trying to calm down my desires and focus on one problem at a time. The current problem being my state of mind.
Which brings me to my yoga journey. There is so much hype right now about the physical part of yoga. These beautiful poses and advanced routines plastered all over the media. Its nauseating, its inspiring, and sometimes its depressing. Do I want to be where those people are? Absolutely! But that isn’t what yoga is. Yoga isn’t in the poses, its in the journey of life, self discovery, awareness, and connection to a higher power. Its growing and changing as a person, developing strength and awareness physically, and creating a connection to the powers that be. It’s not a religion, its not devil worshiping, its not opening doors to demonic anything, and its certainly not pretty poses to post on social media. What it is, is the journey of life, self discovery, and connection to something higher and more powerful than yourself.
One of the biggest lessons to learn in yoga is dedication and discipline. Not everyones dedication and discipline looks the same though. I am dedicated and committed to my yoga journey, but its not the physical side of the journey, its the mental and emotional side. I am still trying to mend and heal emotional and mental trauma. This trauma isn’t necessarily from life experiences or bad things that happened in my life, but trauma I created in myself. My healing process is long because I continue to fall back on negative self talk and struggle to find happiness within myself. So where I learn and grow there are times where I fall back and have to re-learn again. For me the growth is long and with a lot of hills and valleys.
This brings me to what it means to be a yoga teacher. When people picture a yoga teacher they see someone who is physically fit and can do all of the advanced yoga poses. This is because the media has marketed yoga as being a tool for being physically fit and extremely flexible. But like I said, this is not what yoga is, its been morphed and mutated into something completely different. Yes with practice, dedication, and time you can become physically fit and flexible but thats not the essence of yoga.
To be what you want to be you must practice, be dedicated, and have discipline. The most important things in life will come first and will take precedent over everything else. So when I stop and think about whats important to me and what I focus on the most, it ends up being my mental health and my family. I am a yoga teacher with a strong dedication to mental health, who is not physical fit, who is not flexible, and who does not spend much time day-to-day on their own physical yoga practice.
My teaching style is a focus on self discovery, self awareness, and learning proper form and structure with each yoga pose. I teach these things because these things are what is important to me and what I focus on in my life. I do not venture outside of what I do not know. So if you come to me wanting to know proper form in an arm balance than you will get directed to a teacher that knows these things. I am not a beginner student but I am not an intermediate teacher. My current focus is on mental and physical stability, the next stage will be strength and balance.
Teaching feels fantastic to me. I love helping people understand poses and see their shock when they finally figure out that struggle pose, or they finally become aware of a muscle that needs loosened or tightened. It feels good to help people learn to love yoga as what it is and not what its marketed to be. So if you have came to my page and this is the first post that you read without taking any of my classes or coming to an energy healing session, understand not to judge a book by its cover. My external appearance does not reflect the type of teacher that I am. Don’t judge my curves and determine that I am not a good yoga teacher. Really reflect on my journey, my style, and what I could bring to the table from my experiences and self growth.
It’s my hope to create blogs about my journey and where I am at. My current stage has lasted a good 2 years so don’t expect a lot of updates on my next stage soon. But hopefully I’ll have little epiphanies here and there that I will remember to blog about. Maybe someday soon I’ll find a niche and really blow up my blog about it! For now, I’m going to enjoy my journey and try to embrace the life I have right now. If you have read this far, thank you for listening and I hope that we can collaborate soon.
