For the past few months my yoga practice went completely off balance. Which basically means, my life went off balance as well. It needed to. A time of self -realization was brewing up in the Palisades since my return from Dubai, starting my yoga business, and finding love. Without my Yoga practice to ground me, my ego mind was having way too much fun.
I was simply not connecting with the asana classes, teachers, studios I once so deeply embraced. I used to leave those intense power yoga classes in bliss and drenched in sweat, but lately something was missing. The vinyasa teacher that always had the power to guide me into heart opening experiences lacked something too. Kundalini wasn’t even resonating with me. Something was off…
So, I meditated on finding a new practice. A practice, which will open the blockage that I was feeling within my body. A practice that would guide me back to the connection of mind and soul during vinyasa flow and teach me everything I need to know about yoga from Patanjali’s yoga sutras to cooking mung beans, to chanting planet mantras to unlocking my Kundalini energy.
Yogananda’s quotes (Autobiography of a Yogi) and Paulo Coelho books always picked me up for a quick blissful fix, but with the disappointment after meditating on this issue for some months now, I was seriously dropping into a funk.
Plus, I was feeling like if I don’t get my practice back, my students whom I teach would suffer as well.
And then….
Not sure when this happened, but I found myself in an Ashtanga studio, Series A, Maricyasana D. I was inhaling deeply as my teacher guided my arm over my knee behind my back clasping my wrist. Inhale lengthen, exhale extend, release.
A practice not guided, a practice at my pace, a practice with deep connection to the soul.
Ashtanga yoga: is a system of yoga transmitted to the modern world by Sri K. Pattabhi Jois (1915-2009). This method of yoga involves synchronizing the breath with a progressive series of postures—a process producing intense internal heat and a profuse, purifying sweat that detoxifies muscles and organs. The result is improved circulation, a light and strong body, and a calm mind.
Was this a coincidence that my boyfriend just so happens to live a block away from one of the best mysore ashtanga studios in the nation? Coincidences, I believe don’t just happen. My mediation, my connection with the universe guided me to Ashtanga Yoga Los Angeles. And to my boyfriend, of course!
Anyhoo…I found my asana practice again. Just like writers block happens, or a lull in the dating game, or falling off the bandwagon for a whole pizza pie. My yoga practice was becoming blah, I needed something new. I did not push it. I allowed patience, I asked for guidance, and the universe delivered,
