Yoga off the mat: change
I’ve been practising yoga for over 25 years and now it’s quite simply the most important guide for how I live my life, particularly when I’ve faced and managed change.
Discovering yoga at just the right time
Becoming a parent was by far the biggest ‘change challenge’ I’d ever navigated. Thankfully, my yoga journey started when I was pregnant with my first child. I joined a class at the local gym and was instantly hooked. While I loved being able to stretch and move into fascinating shapes that I never thought I could achieve, what really intrigued me was the sense of peace and calm that washed over me, even though some of the practices and poses were challenging.
Once I had my second child and my corporate career grew, yoga started to help me actually manage my life. I was becoming more committed to finding time to roll out my mat.
Becoming a yoga retreat junkie
In the spring of 2013 I attended my first yoga retreat. I only knew one person who was attending, and I hadn’t practised with any of the teachers before. I was so nervous that on the first night when we sat around the fire and introduced ourselves, I was utterly tongue-tied. We spent four days in a log cabin in remote bushland on the NSW south coast, near the banks of a wide and slow-running river. Alongside dedicated women I discovered seasonal yoga practices and learnt more about ancient yoga philosophies, which led to a deeper spiritual awareness. What an amazing, mind-blowing weekend that was. I had finally found my thing! My tribe! My passion!
After that, my yoga journey ramped up. I continued to practice different styles of yoga including Iyengar, Ashtanga, Restorative and Yin classes, and attended as many yoga retreats as possible. Immersing in the practices and wisdom of yoga continued to help me navigate life’s constant challenges.
Changing my path
In 2015 my yoga teacher from that first retreat, who had become a wonderful and supportive friend, planted a seed by encouraging me to do a yoga teacher training course. I came up with all kinds of excuses and reasons not to go ahead. Talk about impostor syndrome! Yoga had helped me in so many ways, and yet I hesitated.
Five years later I left corporate life. Strangely, the global pandemic offered a silver lining, allowing me to reassess my priorities and recalibrate. It gave me the space and the impetus to create the life I felt I was being drawn to. Such a huge career disruption helped to highlight and unravel other aspects of my life. Safety, structure, certainty - it was all up for grabs.
Adjusting to a new way of being in 2020 was difficult, not only on a practical level, but also in confronting how deeply my sense of self was intertwined with my work identity, heightened by concerns around financial security. I felt trapped in that hamster wheel. The pull towards a new way of being in the world grew stronger.
Eventually, I took the leap and immersed myself in an incredible 12 months of yoga studies and teacher training. Navigating away from the corporate world towards the unknown was hard and scary. And yet all the while, there was yoga. The practice, the teachings, the wisdom. What an incredible gift it has been throughout so many changes in my life.