Why I started Yoga, how Yoga and nutrition played an important role in recovery and healing and why I created Vibe Yoga Joint – 3 Part Series

As I start the first series of these blogs, come along with me on my own personal journey of sharing my very first yoga experience and how it helped my heal through depression and grief of the loss of a family member. How I used it as a method to understand what was happening to my body, via internal elements of stress, anxiety and depression and the external elements of financial stress, being a single mother, holding down multiply jobs at once and being stuck in a toxic relationship. I will be breaking down this 1st Blog as a three-part series to help you get to know all about me, my yoga philosophy and lifestyle and why I started this website. They are not all going to be this heavy and long, but I would really like for you to get to know me and I hope that you keep coming back, finding your way into a regular yoga practice and enjoy the recipes and future blogs.

Here is part of Why I Started Yoga:

My very first Yoga experience was from a recommendation to me from a friend as I went through the grieving process of a loss of my step-father back in 2004. I was very close to him and the loss was devasting to me but I never really had time to allow myself to grieve as I had to be strong for my mother. I had no time to feel anything but helping my mom, to allow her time to grieve while I picked up her pieces.

After the funeral and things slowed down, I started to notice that I was getting sick and my body was shutting down and I was finding it difficult to stay focused. I had a very dear friend that was a counselor and I would often turn to her for advice, mostly because she was an amazing listener and never judge my feelings. It got to the point that she told me if I did not do something about it, that she would have to start charging me! That is where the first suggestion of Yoga healing was introduced to me. I have done a few occasional yoga classes but nothing really stuck that left me wanting for more and defiantly nothing that I thought would help me through my grief. But then it happened…I found the one class that changed my life, literally. It was more of what we call now, a restorative practice, with pillows and soft music, gentle movements and low light. I cannot tell you much more about this experience except that I began to allow myself to emotionally let go, to the point of tears, big, heavy, drippy tears, streaming down my face. It was a different type of crying, more a release than anything else. It was full of love; heavy from months of hidden emotion that I was terrified to allow myself to express. It was grief, loss, it was pain…and it was all coming out of my tears. The instructor was so loving, she gently pressed her hands over my heart, placed some tissue there, as spoke those words, as a yoga instructor often does, “let it all go”.

As I started to sit up as class was ending, I took a peek to see if anyone else in the room looked even a little bit like they just went through some life alternating experience, and guess what? Nope, just very relaxed and calm.

The something unexpected happened, some of the other students came up and hugged me, including the instructor. I was like, “What the heck just happened?”. Needless to say, I was hooked. I am not saying that you need to cry during your first class but this is a practice of patience, of exploration, of healing, strength and most importantly self-love. This is the magic of Yoga. It somehow knows what you need and exactly when and where things need to be released and when and where things need to gather. It will become whatever you need it to be for that exact moment. The more you practice, the more your body will respond, the more relaxed your thoughts will become and you will start to make that amazing shift into an exploration of your own practice. As you continue to stay with me, I will share more about my continued journey and to the turning point that took me into Teacher Training and becoming a Yoga Instructor.