My Yoga Journey
This picture was the first picture I ever shared with the ‘world’ of my yoga practice. I got so many responses I wasn’t sure if it was because up until then you’d only know I regularly practiced yoga if I invited you to a class, if it was because I was a Christian and practicing yoga was considered right up there with voodoo or if because of the recent pregnancy, I still looked seemingly pregnant and people were shocked I could balance with my equilibrium off. Of course this is so far from where my yoga journey began. Now if you’ve already heard my yoga story on the various podcasts I’ve shared it on, don’t feel ike you have to read this again.
My yoga journey began because I was a junior in high school with two parents that were going through the most toxic and devastating divorce. My school gymnastics team was dismantled that year and I missed my team and the fun we had. I also missed how much used to joke about levitating and vibrators but that’s a story for another day. All the jokes about levitating led me to trying a free yoga class at the YMCA I worked at.
I had never practiced anything like this before and just bought my mom a yoga set with a mat, blocks and strap for Christmas and she was letting me use it to try this class. For context, I have always been a ‘type-A’ personality, very structured and organized which also meant I had a tendency to overthink and analyze everything. I walked into this yoga class early and not really knowing what to expect but I was open to whatever was. The instructor walked in and she was an older woman with silver hair. Her physique was toned and strong and she moved in ways I didn’t know older people could move and yet she was so gentle and kind. I couldn’t tell you the sequence or postures we moved through but I remembered feeling like I was standing on highway 75 in Atlanta, GA at 5pm and suddenly all of the cars and people were gone and it was just me. I did not know there was such way to experience peace in thought and mind like what I experienced that day and it is what led me to committing to a regular practice way before things like Facebook and IG existed making yoga ‘trendy’ or unique for Black women to participate in.
Fast forward, I joined the Air Force right before I graduated high school and no matter what duty station I was at, I always found a yoga practice and a church to sustain me. I heard the whispers from other Christians about how I was playing with the devil by having a yoga practice but I could not get away from a practice that felt so sacred and that made me feel closer to God. Nine years from when I first started to practice, I was pregnant with my first child and what I missed most was the control or agency I had over my own body and (during this time it was still NOT okay for a woman to do much pregnant) my yoga practice. I could not wait to get back on my mat but I knew this time I wanted more than to practice yoga, I wanted to teach.
But my teaching journey would not begin until two years later after my mother’s transition, I birthed my second child and moved to Hawaii. Through my practice and again discernment I choose to attend Hawaii Yoga Institute for my initial 200-hour training and boy was I glad that I did. So much of my journey now as a teacher and healing guide came from my foundation at HYI that taught us to teach intuitively and for the students that showed up and not just our sequence we wanted to teach. It also modeled the various ways yoga and its practices are healing modalities but so are the arts. And now, as my journey continues as a forever student, I have the opportunity to teach students and upcoming teachers to become teachers or sharpen their skills as teachers.
Giving credit and honor to all of my lineages, I did my initial 200-hour yoga teacher training at Hawaii Yoga Institute, my 300-hour with Skill In Action under the wisdom of Michelle Cassandra Johnson, my Yoga Therapy Level 1 training with Phoenix Rising* Yoga Therapy and my 300-hour Ayurveda Training with Katie Silcox of The Shakti School. There are additional trainings I have taken to be better able to serve those in my community like Restorative Yoga for Race-Based Trauma Injury under the wisdom of Dr. Gail Parker, Gentle Yoga with Ursel Harmon and Yoga Nidra with Chanti Tacoronte-Perez and Tracee Stanley.