How I got to 'living yogi' and how you can too

I didn’t get to this life on purpose. I didn’t come to yoga through a yoga studio, a nimble body or a calm mind. I wasn’t thinking in high school that I wanted to live like a yogi. I got here battered and bruised, stiff and sore. I got here through a life lived without values or restraint. I arrived here damaged. 

My first step onto the path of yoga was when I was very young - around 14 - when I attended a class while at boarding school. It didn’t give me much then other than cold mornings and a sense of resentment because I wasn't in my nice warm bed. But 6am was the only time of day school would let me go, so there I was. It didn’t last long but it did linger, if you know what I mean. 

From then on, yoga became an on again, off again part of my life for years. Every now and again I would get curious and go to a class, but it wasn’t until around 2012 and I was in desperate need of something - anything - to quite literally save me, that I found it again, this time through meditation. And I did need saving by then. I was a shell of myself with nothing left to give, a wreck who accidentally fell onto this amazing path that didn't judge me, but offered me a lifeline. 

Yoga has since woven its way completely into my life. It began with meditation, took me to the studio and then to teacher trainings and ongoing study as it slowly became the way I live my life. Now I study yoga therapy so that I can bring yoga to the sick and infirm as well as the healthy.

Because yoga isn’t just for the mat. Yoga is for life, it’s what I like to call ‘Living Yogi’. It’s incorporating the eight limbs of yoga into my daily practice, overtly and covertly. It’s understanding that yoga has many paths to devotion. It’s understanding that even if you never step onto a mat, yoga offers a way to live your life that honours you and everyone around you with values of compassion, authenticity and love. 

Yoga softens and strengthens. 

It welcomes you and loves you, no matter who you are.