I usually say that I started practicing yoga around late 2005 or early 2006. The truth is yoga took a while to grab my attention. I guess really I was introduced to yoga in the 1990’s by my martial arts teacher but at the time I thought I was doing Kung Fu (I found out later he used yoga heavily in his classes).
Around 2002 I was talked into signing up for a few yoga classes. I HATED IT! I thought the class was torture. I was pretty fit at this time of my life so it surprised me at how hard yoga was. The teacher was high energy and moved fast. She kept saying we were coming into our resting posture, downward dog.. I thought to myself that downward dog was the farthest thing from a resting pose in the universe. I didn’t renew my class pass at that studio. I thought yoga was dumb. I only decided to try it again because I was getting injuries from surfing and it had been recommended by my fellow surfing buddies as a way to minimize this.
The irony? The same yoga teacher who taught those hated yoga classes was the person who I actively seeked out years later for my yoga teacher training. Her style has changed a lot. She works therapeutically with yoga mostly now. But I thought it was sort funny that this particular “dreaded” instructor is now one of my most inspirational influences.
