Falling in Love with Yoga

In 2001, I fell in love with yoga while studying dance technique in New York at the Merce Cunningham studio. I was longing for something new and different which had me searching for the Jivamukti Yoga Studio. I got out my map and miraculously, I had arrived at my destination. Up the elevator I went and as the doors opened, I felt a rush of aliveness -- this felt like the beginning of something magical. The class rocked my world with loud pumping music, mat to mat people sweating on each other and the teacher's voice pounding in my head to wake me up (to wake us all up!).

This hour on the mat was a practice of Sthira and Sukha- Strength and Flexibility, Strong and Grounded that got me. It just got me so deeply that my path was changed forever.

Falling hard for yoga led me on such a beautiful path of owning my life and all the sweet and also unhealthy choices I have been making. The flexibility to own my choices, accept myself and the strength to cut ties to people and life choices that were not serving me.

On the mat, I have been practicing the balance in each pose between being flexible and strong mentally and physically. Some days I want to be lazy and lean into my open hips, and what’s missing if I do this is the integrity of the pose and the willingness to do the work. What happens on the mat, happens off the mat. Therefore, my practice is to bring in this yoga sutra Sthira Sukham Asanam in each of my postures.

There’s a reason we keep getting drawn back to the mat. The way we feel after our practice can be interpreted as our highest selves. We return home to ourselves after cultivating this sweet mix of flexibility and strength. Our stress and tension falls away and nothing seems to matter. The practice is a remembering of who we are -- perfect, whole and complete -- no fixing required.

May you fall in love with our practice of yoga today.

With love,

Cecily