Yoga and The Path Back Home To My Self.

There was a time in my life I was completely lost. I moved out of the country to Costa Rica in 2005. I decided I needed to get out of the country to find myself and see how other people lived. In 2003, I got a DUI and was in a very dark place. It was really a huge awakening for me and changed my life, but once I was out the rabbit hole of what goes along with a DUI, which never included therapy or working on myself, I decided to leave, or run away, to another country. Little did I know that I was running from myself.

It was in Costa Rica that I felt this huge draw to yoga. Back then, there weren’t yoga studios on every corner, at least not in Florida. The first time I did yoga was in the corner of a small room in college. I hardly remember the class because we were shoved in this room and it was literally stretching. The second time I tried yoga was in a gym, again, shoved in a corner with little instruction. And again, I hardly remember the class. I was young, maybe 19 both times. Needless to say, I was intrigued but didn’t really understand what the purpose of yoga was other than stretching. And living in a small country town in the middle of conservative Florida put a damper on things as people usually equated yoga to something evil, or as one person said to me, “you shouldn’t do yoga because it takes your mind to places it should never go.” I had and still have no idea what that person meant, but assuming it had some connection to a God they did not believe was good. Which brings me to this…. I am not equating yoga to religion because it is not. Yoga is a was of life and a way to connect with your Self on a deeper level, through the body. It is also a way to calm the body and mind so you can heal and become more self aware of how you relate to the world. Just wanted to clarify!

I had no idea who I was, I just knew that I liked to move my body. I grew up dancing focusing mainly on ballet. I had gotten up to toe-point and was very good. I constantly practiced and had made my way to audition for The Florida Ballet’s Nutcracker. My mom recently told me they rejected me before I even tried out because I was too tall! So I quit ballet because in middle school it wasn’t cool. I was the only one of my friends who danced, everyone played sports. I tried softball and was horrible and then soccer and decided it just wasn’t for me. Something inside of me wanted to dance! So in high school I made it on the dance team. We were doing kicks at half time and dancing in the bleachers to the beating cadence of the drums. Dance was in my bones and the rhythm moved me. But then it all went away my senior year as I dove deeper into depression and found alcohol and drugs to be more important. And that pattern continue on until I got my DUI right before my 25th birthday. It was a God send and saved my life. What I didn’t realize is that along the path of becoming unconscious I lost that sweet connection with my body. I became numb and disconnected, which I later learned was a trauma response. When I look back at how I was in the world, I would say it was completely out of my body. So much that I couldn’t even think for myself. I felt stupid honestly. I didn’t feel intelligent, or like I could make anything of myself at that time. My only saving grace in between the time I graduated high school until I was 21 was when I went to massage school. Massage school made me realize I was intelligent, but in a different way. And it woke me up to my potential, but it didn’t get me in my body. After massage school was the spiraling out of control became worse due to stress and just trying to find myself.

So back to Costa Rica! My friends and I tried yoga and I loved it. I loved the poses and the breathing. I loved what the teacher was saying, and I loved how my body felt. I started to practice at the place I was living, mainly just stretching since I really didn’t know what I was doing! Then a friend of a friend came to stay with me and low and behold, she was a yoga teacher! So she showed me a few more things and I then I kinda forgot about it until I returned to the states in 2006. I ended up back in Florida and took my first official yoga class in Lakeland. Never did I ever imagine that walking into that studio would change my life forever.

Somehow from that first yoga class, the owner of the studio saw the teacher in me. She believed in me so much that she offered me a room to work as a massage therapist and a few months later threw me into teaching my first class. She literally called me in desperate need of a sub and after deliberating for about 30 minutes I caved. And that is how my career as a yoga teacher began. I cannot describe how intense being in my body for the first time in many many years felt while practicing at that particular studio. I had several emotional releases and started to build a relationship with my Self in a way I never had before. And teaching started to give me a place to use my voice and trust what I was teaching. Teaching yoga was healing in itself because it was empowering me and creating a path into becoming a leader. I had never stood in front of others and spoke. I had never used my voice because it was silenced since I was a very young child. I was hearing myself in a way I never thought possible. And from the empowered place I began to listen to my intuition and my intuition pulled me to the PNW.

I decided to move to the PNW in 2007 and take yoga teacher training with my mentors teachers in Seattle. Little did I know that my life was about to break open and break me down. Mirrors were being shattered left and right and the life I knew was no more. I had just turned 30 and started my journey home, back to my true self. It wasn’t just the yoga, but I also began studying indigenous healing & seeing my first therapist. I was literally unwinding ancestral patterns and coming to terms with my shadows. I was all in on my healing path and it was the most challenging time of my life! Transformation is one of the hardest things we can do in our lifetime, especially when you are the only one in your family doing the work. Witnessing the dysfunction one carries in their body, their mind, and their soul is truly gut wrenching, and I wouldn’t change it for the world! And once you choose the path, you continue to shed layers throughout your life. You will stray from the path and come back. You might even choose a different path, but the truth is that God will keep you going so you can heal the layers that bind you. For me, yoga has always been a reminder of how strong I am and what my body is capable of doing. When I was my sickest with Lyme, it was yoga that inspired me to move and it was yoga that brought me back to my body. It showed me I was capable of doing things my mind was telling me I could not. I felt so weak and tired and was in so much pain, but once I started to move and lengthen and breathe into the places that hurt, the chatter of my mind would ease and I realized I did have strength. My body moved beyond what my mind and thoughts were telling me and I could rest.

Since 2019, right before the pandemic, I started to pull back from teaching yoga. I started to realize that I wasn’t in alignment with the yoga I was teaching and practicing, so I started to really focus my energy elsewhere. It was in that space of isolation from the pandamic, when I had time to really sit with my life and see the chaos that was happening in the world for all of us that I chose to focus more on helping others build their immune systems and recover from COVID. I realized I wasn’t teaching the type of yoga that resonated with my own body and spirit. I was operating from my old Self and was bored with the practice. I had grown so much as an individual, but my yoga practice had not, so I had less desire to teach. I went from doing yoga regularly, to completely leaving my practice and occassionally taking a class when I felt I needed it.

Now that I have slowed down and pulled back from my thriving healing practice (which I am extremely grateful for!), and have been able step back from my life and all I have created the past few years, I have come to realize there has been an emptiness I have been feeling and a longing for something more. Something has been missing in my life and that something was teaching yoga and my spiritual work. They both go hand in hand for me. I experience Spirit and the connection with my Higher Self thru my body. Yoga taught me from the very beginning how to actually feel and to discern what I am feeling. And while I had always been practicing yoga long before the physical aspect of the practice came along for me, I had not truly embodied the yoga until I began my practice in 2006. When I was able to feel my body and where I was holding onto grief and trauma, I then was able to release all I had been holding onto my entire life. And as I write this, I am overwhelmed in thinking of how profound practicing yoga was at the beginning of my healing journey. It was my gateway drug into a deeper inner journey of self awareness and shapeshifting me in ways I never imagined. Yoga opened my heart and deepened my understanding of who I was and why I was who I was. I was able to have more compassion for my Self. Yoga allowed me to see how I had harmed others, myself, and how to forgive.

Everytime I have stepped away from my yoga practice, I have felt confused and disconnected. And while I have many practices of staying connected with Spirit and God, it is through honoring my body and being mindful of my thoughts that I can experience that connection. For me, yoga is a way of life. It is not just the physical poses, it is the words I choose, how I am thinking and being aware of my thoughts, the relationship to my inner and outer worlds, and how I interact with my clients and people in my life and out in the world. It taught me compassion towards my Self and the world I live in.

And now I am slowing down. In mid-life, I no longer wish to push myself and do vinyasa practices. I am choosing more slow and mindful yoga, focusing on meditation and restoration. I am being drawn to teach others about embodiment and how to truly nourishing the body and the nervous system. I am here to help others find calm in a stressed out world. I truly believe the more we work on ourselves in this way, the more calm we bring to our lives and our hearts, the more peace we bring to our thoughts and actions, the more the world will begin to shift around us. I am stepping into living my yoga and creating peace in my own body. I am coming back to the path that transformed me in such beautiful ways and wish to gift this to others. My wish for everyone is to find peace in the body, mind, spirit, and soul. And not necessarily through yoga, but through connection to a higher purpose and the faith. The more we work to come home to our body’s and calm our mind’s, the more we are present to what truly is and for me what truly is is peace. I wish for peace for the world, for my own body and mind, and for all beings.

Stay tuned for yoga nidra classes, and restorative yoga practices in the near future! May we all learn to embody our True Self and move from a place of mindfulness and love.

Namaste,

Heather