How I started my yoga journey

This is a question people ask me all the time.. "How did you get into this yoga thing?" I think a reason people ask is because I (rightly so) seem super obsessed with yoga. I am not the best, most flexible, strongest yogi out there. However, I am obsessed exactly for that reason & for me, the journey to become a better version of myself is addictive.

I took my first ever yoga class in second year of university. It was a hot yoga class, I didn't know anything about yoga, follow any yoga instagrammers, watch any yoga classes on youtube, um or anything else yoga related. I didn't even know, or at least think there was other yoga options that didn't include hot yoga. I know, it sounds soooo silly now but I just didn't think about it, and all the names are so confusing on the websites because they all are weird non english words.. HOW THE HECK WAS I TO KNOW?!

My  closest friends asked if I wanted to go to a hot yoga class with them, & me just wanting to go and spend time with my friends was all "hell ya!" not thinking about what I was even getting in for... I DIDN'T EVEN HAVE A YOGA MAT PEOPLE, AND BROUGHT A BEACH TOWEL AS MY HOT YOGA TOWEL. Ah... when I think back I cringe. But how was I supposed to know any better?  I think everyone has to go through these things when they start any passion. You will fail, embarrass yourself, progress, regress, and love every second of it.

So, that is how it went on for the next 3 years until my fourth year of University, I was just about to graduate, and had made plans to go to Southeast Asai on my Gap Year. I wanted more, I had the summer free & my fourth year of uni had been all about expanding myself & my skills, (& not going to even lie, my resume) I had been an athletic trainer, done 2 internships, and gotten on the deans list! What more could I do? I wanted to get into a good graduate school, eventually, or just be on the short list for an amazing job,, and for those things you need to stand out, be the smartest, and most diverse. So I started thinking.

I had seen on one of my closest friends social media page that she was taking, or had taken a yoga teacher training course. I remembered back to the yoga classes I had taken with my friends, I honestly had really enjoyed them & thought "yeah I could do that!" My undergraduate degree I should mention was Kinesiology (exercise science) and so I thought this would fit in perfectly with all the anatomy I had learned & so on. So I called my mom almost immediately and started talking about it.

I won't go into very many details about the yoga teacher training experience & save that for another blog post. I will say that the experience was intense, I found out just how little of yoga, or even anatomy I thought I new, & how much I learned in a short amount of time. This intensive course really kick started me into this yoga journey & I will always be grateful for my teachers who saw something in me & dug it out so that I could see my full potential was no where near what I had thought.

Soooo thats how I started yoga, very very slowly, with lots of failures, embarrassments, and stupid questions. Whether it is yoga you would want to try or not, know that successful people aren't those who do not fail they are the ones who don't stop trying.


-KK
xo