Hello friends! I am so honored to share my yoga journey with you all. It was a bumpy ride, but eventually I arrived right when I needed to. Lets just start with my first yoga experience since that’s what got me to where I am here & now….see what I did there. ;)
My first yoga class was a noon Vin + Yin on Thursday May 17th, 2018 with Maria(& yes I totally went all the way back in the MINDbody app to find that date). I was introduced to yoga by my dear friend Stephanie who is also a yoga teacher and colleague of mine. I remember being so nervous but I trusted Stephanie and knew that she wouldn’t steer me wrong. I actually was so nervous I remember looking up yoga videos and poses before hand so that it would look like I at least knew some stuff even though at this point I was convinced *insert very heavy sarcasm here* I would just be stretching cause that’s all yoga is, right…. oh how very, very, WRONG I was. We were on probably our third Sun A and I was already sweating, questioning if I would make it the next 45 minutes. Then came the Yin portion and I was like “This is yoga too? ….YEAH I GOT THIS!” By the end of shavasana I was hooked. I came back the next three weeks on my day off to that Vin + Yin class. I loved that the teachers always focused on how we felt in our bodies and that it was never about how we looked. I was not used to this since I grew up an athlete, it was always about being better and fitting in certain boxes. By my 14th class ever, I decided it would be a good idea to take Andrea’s Hot Power class… I think it took me a while to come back to Hot Power after that lol.
I should probably touch on what lead me to yoga in the first place, besides Stephanie being very persuasive. This is where things get a little bumpy. I was in a place and at a point in my life where I found myself drinking and using drugs as a way to cope with a lot of emotional trauma that had built up over the years. A major life event took place in 2011 when my family and I lost my big brother in a motorcycle accident. I had moved to Akron shortly after, and started college there after attending a local college for two years. I was living with a group of woman and we livedddd for Friday Night. We would get all dressed up and put our make-up on and walk over to whatever house was throwing a party which usually happened to be our neighbors. Looking back, I know I was using this as distraction from what had happened to my brother.
At this point I was just being introduced to alcohol and the feeling of being drunk as I had just turned 21. At first it was a way to let loose and have some fun. But years went by and I eventually met my now partner, Randy. We met at Thursdays (RIP) and hung out in the Highland Sq area frequently. We were pretty big into the bar scene around Akron. We moved in together fairly quickly. For 3 years we drank every weekend together. Shortly after we bought our first house together, I started using about a year later. It was always with other people at first and it made me feel this type of confidence I had never had growing up. I felt invincible and was “happy". Then the next day would roll around, and I felt like complete trash and would lay on my couch watching Netflix and ordering pizza and wings that I could barely stomach. Just an endless feeling of regret and shame. Hiding under my blanket until I had to go to work the next day.
This is where Stephanie comes in. I was on vacation when my manager informed me I would be getting an assistant manager finally! I was a bit nervous as I didn’t interview her and didn’t know what to expect. So when I meet Stephanie and she tells me how she’s a yoga teacher my immediate response is “I could NEVER do yoga, I’m not flexible enough”, Stephanie sort of chuckled and told me I didn’t have to be flexible to do yoga and she thinks I would really benefit from it. I kinda laugh it off and tell her maybe, and we go about our day. Eventually Stephanie shares with me she is getting aerial yoga certified and that she would love for me to come to one of her classes. I decide to try a regular class first and we all know what happened next: I arrived at Yoga Squared and from there, the rest is history.
I fell in love with yoga and myself for the first time in my life. I was able to come to terms with the fact that I needed to get sober. At this point, I knew I had a problem and would go about 2 weeks sober and then I’d think it would be a great idea to do it just one more time or that this time would be ok, or that maybe I wouldn’t feel like complete trash the next day. I had been to AA meetings, and they worked for a little while, they helped me get consistently sober. What really worked was showing up on my mat, I couldn’t show up hungover or intoxicated. I did have a relapse while on vacation over 2 years ago and I came home and talked to Stephanie about how I had to cancel one of her classes because I was too hungover to show up and hang upside on an aerial silk. She said something to me like “Well if it’s affecting your practice so much, why do you still do it?” She didn’t know for certain ( I suspect she knew with her intuition) that I had any issues with alcohol or drugs, and at that moment it was so obvious, like, yeah… why do I keep doing this to my body and allowing this to affect my practice. So I got sober(again) on September 2nd, 2018 and have been sober since! Yoga literally saved my life. Yoga Squared played such an important role in my sobriety from the beginning. I will never be able to say thank you enough to everyone at YS(Nikki + Kate, the other teachers, the students) for holding space for not just me, but everyone who needs it, especially the ones who don’t know it yet.
I am so grateful for all the experiences I have gotten to have because of yoga. I have deeper friendships, I have meaningful connections with others, and have the best relationship with my partner. Randy is also two years sober and we recently bought our second home together in Uniontown with our two cats, Mr.Cat( yes his name is really Mr. Cat) and Smokey. We also just celebrated 7 years together <3
I got to travel internationally for the first time with the YS fam and one of my best friends, Lauren, you’ve probably seen her in Hot Power or read her blog(issa good one, go read it if you haven’t), and I just completed my 200 HR YTT with Yoga Squared! If you would have told me two years ago that I would be sober and teaching a Vin + Yin demo to 13 people I would not have believed you. Like at all. Yoga gave me true confidence and self esteem. I feel capable because I am, and I know that’s true because of what I do on and off my mat.
Yoga has given me time + permission to work on myself, my relationship with myself, my relationships with others, and so much more. I could seriously go on and on about all the benefits and how much happier I am and how great I feel. Instead, I hope to see you on your mats and around the studio. I’ll leave you with a quote I came across that resonates with me in this moment, “Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch the work: you don’t give up” ~ Anne Lamott
Namaste,
Mary