My First Yoga Experience by CPY Blog Community (Part II)
PEEK BEHIND THE SCENES WITH OUR BLOG WRITING TEAM!
Each month we gather together to explore the crossroads of yoga and Christ. Our gatherings together are precious, and we look forward to them for our own growth, healthy sharing with each other and maybe even the creation of a public post for you, our readers. Enjoy this sampling that came right out of one of our meetings. For more on how our private writing becomes public read Part I.
MY FIRST YOGA EXPERIENCE - PART II OF II
Allyson Huval CPY Managing Director & Teacher
I returned to yoga from years of wandering and landed in a body I didn’t quite know. Years and years fluttered by using my body but ignoring it. I attended an aerial yoga class at the end of the summer in 2015. When the time came to invert, I was terrified. I didn’t trust myself and I definitely didn’t trust this piece of stretchy fabric. I feared the unknown of what was behind my back. My back and my motor skills were a part of me although it felt like we just met. My body felt like an old acquaintance I casually said hello to in the grocery store of my hometown. I did not want to ask too much of it, yet we know by going upside down your perspective changes.
Change.
Not only did my body change after this one class but my relationship with her did too. She became tired and I listened. She became strong and I listened. As she changed, so did I. I embraced her change and listened when she did. I felt the growth of muscles and trust. Sometimes I felt the waning of energy and confidence. The only thing that stayed consistent in our relationship was change.
Renee Prymus - CPY Former President & Blog Creator
I’ve written about my first experience in a yoga class before on this site, but that wasn’t my very first experience with yoga. My very first introduction to yoga was through a Gaiam DVD. In the fall of 2004, I was in my second year teaching high school English at missionary high schools in South America. I was living in “the pink house” with six other women who were teaching at the same school. My room was in a small building behind the main house; the room was painted yellow with a high ceiling and rafters–I had plenty of room to stretch my arms.
The room had a tile floor, and I did not have a mat. The DVD must have been a beginners’ video because there was a different track for each pose and one track that put them all together. I played the DVD on my laptop computer and followed the instructions for each pose individually. I remember turning off the lights because it seemed calmer in the room. Now, I think it was perhaps also more sacred–but at the time, I did not connect the yoga practice to spirituality. I do not remember a savasana in the DVD–perhaps the practice ended in savasana but did not dwell there in actual minutes on the video. I moved slowly through the poses, but didn’t really connect with the practice.
The experience wasn’t like the yoga class I took later, where I instantly connected my faith to practicing yoga. I followed the DVD a couple of times, but mostly used Billy Blanks’ Tae-Bo DVD or ran laps around a neighborhood park. As a young teacher, I was drowning in work and self-doubt, and I knew that I needed to do something physical. Later, when I began practicing yoga, I knew that if I had had the actual yoga practice while I was teaching, I might not have burnt out so fast–I left the school after that year. In this memory of the DVD, I see that I had had access to yoga as a tool–but I may not have been ready for it then. I’m sure it planted a seed for my later experience of falling in love with yoga as both a physical and spiritual practice.
Joanne Spence CPY Writer & Teacher
My first encounter with taking a yoga class was a little unusual. It was unusual because it was the beginning of a yoga teacher training program. That’s not often the place one begins learning to teach something one knows virtually nothing about. But then, I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
There was nothing at all relaxing about the class. Running through my mind was “oh crap, what have I signed up for?” I’d like to say that things got easier as the training progressed, but it didn’t. Instead, I became disheartened. The poses I was learning didn’t look hard but when I tried to do them as instructed, they looked nothing like the rest of the class. It was exhausting. This was also confusing. Why was it so hard? And boring? And slow? Added to this line of inquiry was the fact that the training was just one weekend long. There I was learning all there was to know about teaching a yoga class so I could go out the following month and teach others. Sounds like a total recipe for disaster, right? No one would blame you for thinking that. However, something happened during that weekend of confusion, boredom, and pain.
It’s true that my initial encounter with yoga was both physically and psychologically painful. I had two solid years of post-car-accident trauma stored in my body. And before Bessel van der Kolk ever wrote about and reminded me that the body keeps the score, I felt it. But I can’t end the story here. The real reason I tell the story of how I started is that despite the challenges, that weekend changed the course of my life. Three days later, I woke up and did not experience pain in my body as I usually did upon waking. Something had shifted. To say I was surprised, astonished, grateful is an understatement. At first, I wasn’t even sure if it was the yoga training. Except that on the days I practiced yoga, I continued to be pain free and when I didn’t, I could barely get out of bed. It felt like a miracle. To me it was a miracle – a real gift to me and my family. When I reflect upon this time from twenty plus years later, it was just like God to orchestrate such a scenario that I could never even dream up for myself. I have never looked back!
Doreen Corwith Eckert CPY Vice President & Executive Editor of the Blog
After a few years of traveling around the USA studying environmental education with the Audubon Expedition Institute, in my 20’s, \I moved to southern Vermont to work. Recurring tension headaches started manifesting as severe pain that debilitated me. My boss (who was one of the causes of my tension), called a friend of his to give me a massage; she sent me to her friend, Amy, a yoga teacher at the Praise Song Spiritual Center in Brattleboro.
I walked into a long room with wood floors and tall, old windows opening out to the Connecticut River three stories below. Amy's calm demeanor welcomed me among the half-dozen people setting up. She was small in stature with dark wavy hair. I can still hear her voice. She led us in a yoga sequence ending with shoulder stand, plough and savasana. I remember them because of the intense stimulation in the back of my heart where I have always felt like there is a hole. After class, Amy asked how I felt. I said, "My mid-back really hurts; I can feel the tight muscles there". She assured me that with practice, I would become more flexible and feel better.
For my second class, I brought my two roommates. The long room was already full, so Amy opened the door to the neighboring office and allowed us to be there as she taught to both rooms. As we left, I developed a SEVERE headache and cried all the way home in the back of my roommate’s car. They were at a loss as to what to do with me. Shirley tried to massage my temples and Steph got me some aspirin. Eventually it subsided.
In time I figured out the headaches had to do with self-worth. The asana and pranayama opened the dam of collected experiences from 20 years of stuffing my feelings - of not knowing how to process emotions or communicate words like " I am upset with you; I am sorry; I love you; please forgive me; I forgive you". The body truly does keep the score of the heart.
Spiritually, I was in a rejection and exploration phase. Having left my Christian roots during college, I also rejected my mom’s definition for my adult life and was determined to manifest life on my terms. I felt defiant. Yet I felt lost and fearful too. Defiance helped me grow out of my cultural boundaries, but I carried it to an extreme. Finding moderation and balance to become my best True Self took decades.
Amy's kind soul in those first yoga classes spoke to me, and I carry gratitude for her and the practices that propelled me into three decades of self-healing and a career in the holistic health field. Yoga also helped me to reclaim Christ as my Guide and become an advocate for living at the crossroads of yoga and Christ.
Featured image by Glenn Carstens-Peters @glenncarstenspeters via Unsplash.
