Finding Love for my Body: part 1
- Nov 15, 2023
- 3 min read
Updated: May 28, 2024
The following post is what started this blog...a plea for help, for sevice in exchange of service, a openning of my heart.
Link to the GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/dd6152ab
For most people, yoga is exercise.
It’s stretching and bending in tight pants and matching strappy bras. It’s gorgeous bodies flashing impossible acrobatic postures on mandala rubber mats. It’s woke hippies toting crystals, ranting about chakras, and burning incense sticks. It’s soccer moms speeding to the gym for their one hour of me-time…and although it is easy to understand yoga as fancy stretching for Instagram influencers, pseudo-philosophers and escapist individuals,
I have come to realize that the book of yoga is so much more than the cover we see....
For nearly all my life, I have struggled to find love for my body.
My first yoga class came after years of diets and binges and crying and hating the way I looked. At 16 years old, in my first-ever yoga class, I remember feeling a glimpse of peace within my body.
Years went by before my next real conversation with yoga, and at that point I felt more peace with how I looked, but by then my University-student self had a different kind of unhealthy relationship with her body: overcompensation, pushing too hard and thriving on the "always try harder, always strive for better" attitude. I revelled in the sweaty defeat at the end of my hot yoga classes, satisfied to have shed a few pounds of water weight.
Two years ago I moved to Prague, Czech Republic with the greatest sense of peace in my body I had felt since early childhood ...and yet... I soon fell into a series of sickness, poor choices, bad relationships, and a cloudy, overcrowded mind. (Funny how the body always seems to fall prey to the sickness of spirit and mind.)
Again: I turned to yoga, to the mat, to the medicine of movement.
But this time, I have found something so simple and yet so difficult: love.
Compassionate love for my self and my body, but also tough love through discipline and balance.
In its essence, yoga is connection:
Connection to our bodies, to our breath, to our neighbors, and to our God (whomever or whatever that is for you). It is going deeper into ourselves but also deeper into our experience of life itself. It is a path to healing, to love and compassion, to discipline and balance. It is not the path for everybody, but for me, it is the potential to grow and learn, and to share what I find in service to others.
.....And through my practice, I have realized that I must set aside my pride and find humility in asking for help:
In October 2023 I began my 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training course with the Prague Yoga Collective, mostly with the goal of deepening and perfecting my own practice. What I have found along the way is a wealth of love, gratitude, and healing. Now as I near the end of my course, I feel a burgeoning passion to continue my education so I can be of greater service to my future students. I hope to delve deeper into the elements of movement, medicine, food, philosophy, sound therapy, and even God.
What I ask of you--if you would be so obliged--is to help sponsor my next yoga teacher training in Koh Phangan, Thailand. Consider it a holiday gift, a birthday present, love from your heart, or (as I prefer) an exchange for future services.
I hope to join a 100-hour course on Yin Yoga and the Foundations of Chinese Medicine in February 2024. Yin Yoga is a slow, restorative practice often guided by different body systems to help all kinds of pains, ailments, and stressors. For more information on Yin Yoga and the YTT course itself, follow these links:
What is Yin Yoga?:
What is the Course?:
The goal is to reach $1,000 to cover some of the tuition cost for the course.
Find the GoFundMe here: https://gofund.me/dd6152ab
In exchange for your support, I would like to offer free yoga classes and/or friendly conversation about any topics you’d like to discuss about my journey and new education. These classes would likely take place in Springfield and/or Columbia, Missouri when I return home in April/May 2024. And hopefully in the future as I continue to develop my skill as a teacher and a healer, I will be able to offer more in the form of movement medicine, massage, sound therapy, and even nutritious and delicious food. Stay tuned for developments, and thank you for your support, financial or otherwise. :)
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