Memory, belief, hope: What yoga means to me

Ultimately, I believe my yoga journey began when I was a young girl paddling a canoe in Northern Ontario.  It was on those lakes that I remember watching time slow down as I counted my strokes and watched the horizon line shift with the daily observation of sunrises and sunsets.

It was there that I first experienced the intimacy of being human and the essential wisdom of our connection with all beings.  Of course, I didn’t call this yoga at the time, but the seeds were planted all the same. Later, in my early 20s, yoga reemerged as a way to make playful shapes, a way to feed my curiosity about how to feel quieter, and a way to nourish my growing love for embodiment.

After many years of relating to my body as an athlete, I was intrigued by the potential to experience my body as a home, my body as my friend, and my body as a sensory and spiritual playground for the most poetic moments of this lifetime. I also vividly remember some of my first experiences in deep relaxation, where my breathing slowed down, time seemed to stand still, and the expression of what really matters seemed to be clear.

Yoga is a dance of movement and stillness, a playground for wholeness to emerge, a wordless conversation with the wild landscape of our humanity and a place to uncover our connection and love for all beings.

Yogic states of being have the capacity to sit with the most wild joys and the most profound losses we will inevitably uncover in our lifetime.

I believe yoga and meditation practices guide us towards the wisdom of presence and allows us to face the uncertainty of not-knowing in a world that always likes to have answers. In the day to day of life, yogic states of being remind us to take time & space to simply be with ourselves, and ask us to value the intention to pay attention, one breath at a time.

One of my heart’s wishes is to share the ways that practicing listening, breathing & moving our bodies in subtle and dynamic ways has the potential to support shifts that extend into the depths of our relationships & communities by expanding our capacity to connect and care for all beings.

Inevitably, like all things in life, my yoga practice continues to shift & evolve.  These days I am less attached to how many hours I am on my mat and more interested in noticing the ways yogic states of being continue cultivate within me a sense of clarity, ease & a willingness to fully show up for the curveballs of life.  Of course, the paradox is that showing up on my cushion and my mat allows for those states to unfold.

The unfolding of yoga in my life has evolved into a remembering, a belief and a hope that each of us has the potential to feel healed, connected and whole. Yoga breathes me into the present moment every day and reminds me that even when people, places, and creatures we love to feel far away, we can touch each other through the warm wind’s soft breeze towards infinity.