Why I found Yoga

Why did I turn to yoga?  Easy – because I am a stress-head! 

I’m one of those people whose head is never quiet – thoughts just race round and round.  Worst case scenarios are always top of mind and I over think absolutely everything! 

It finally got to the point where I needed an outlet, so I turned to the gym and became a total gym junkie.  It’s pretty easy to push thoughts out of your head when you are jumping around gasping for breath!  Gym was my happy place – even my work colleagues knew that gym was a priority and I would not attend late meetings as these would interfere with my gym routine.  I’d spend hours at the gym before heading home, and when people asked me when did I have the time to unwind and relax, I’d say that was what my time gym was for. 

I was so obsessed with this amazing outlet I’d found, that I failed to heed the warnings of various allied health professionals that I had around me, keeping me in one piece.  They kept telling just because I could spend hours at the gym, doesn’t mean I should.  If I wasn’t careful, my body would start to break. 

And unfortunately they were right – first there was a stress-fracture in my foot (too much pounding).  Then after rehabbing the foot, there was a labral tear in my hip (too much pounding), and a similar tear in my shoulder (overuse).  So my body pretty much was telling me to stop, this was not the best way for me to cope.

Every cloud has a silver lining and my silver lining was Pilates. In all my time at the gym, I never gave Pilates a second look but now I had to try something different so I gave Pilates a go – and fell in love immediately!!!!  This was the physical challenge I was looking for without pounding my joints and over-taxing my body.  In short, Pilates changed my life completely as I studied to become an instructor and gave up my previous corporate career to teach Pilates full time.

While transitioning to my new life as a Pilates instructor, I came in contact with so many yoga teachers who became my closest friends.  And I started attending so many yoga classes, thinking it was just about the movement, but started learning so much more.  The classes were slower, still challenging, but with more time for those pesky thoughts to fly around my head.  I realised that I hadn’t actually achieved anything in all those years of pummeling my body – the stress-head still lived on.  So my next challenge was to embrace the slower style and learn, as my yoga teacher says, to “sit with my shit”. 

Last year, I took the plunge and did my yoga teacher training.  It was not an obvious decision as I am the least bendy person in the world and my ever present hip and shoulder injuries really inhibit me from practicing yoga as you see in those pretty pictures on Instagram.  But my absolute belief is that movement is medicine, for the body and the mind.  And I desperately want to share the fabulous benefits of both Pilates and yoga to those I can see, who like the old me, are trying to cope with the craziness of the modern world but really don’t know how to get off the merry-go-round that is life.