A journey begins with a single step. But in order to take this step, you must be mentally and physically ready. Here is the beginning of my journey.
I remember the first time I thought about trying Yoga. I had been in Dublin for a couple of years, having landed my first full time job and feeling stressed and under pressure. At that time, I was going to the gym a lot, trying out different classes and coaches. My favourite at the time was Bootcamp, so miles away from yoga!
Then I remember that the gym was also offering yoga classes, and because I was training at least three to four times a week, I thought it would be a good thing to try to stretch out all the weekly exercise.
My first yoga class
This was in the gym actually, and we didn't even have a proper separate room to do that, just a small place between different machines and the free weight area. But even though the space wasn't giving the best possible experience, I loved it. The teacher was engaging and I still got a proper workout out of it, being sore the next day. At that point, I started going to these classes once a week.
The benefits
Then I changed jobs and got one very much more demanding and further away. Because of the commute, I couldn't go to the usual classes anymore and kind of stopped Yoga for a couple of months. But one day, I got this really important project to manage at work and felt all the pressure of it in my everyday life, so I started thinking, what about going back to yoga, in a studio not a gym and see.
The first step in the studio was probably the hardest one to take. I didn't know what to expect.
I remember looking around me a lot during this first class, to check out what other people were doing and how they were doing it. I also remember walking back home after the class and feeling just relaxed and good, without any specific thoughts in my mind. From then, I took on a class pass and went back regularly.
I changed jobs again and this time, there were yoga classes onsite, in the office, three times a week. I was going at least one or two times and loving it.
Feeling home
Then Covid happened and with it lockdowns all over the world. I really needed to occupy my brain to not worry about my family in France, me being in Ireland and not able to get there if anything happened... Like many of us, I picked up lots of hobbies at the time, I got into running, cooking and yoga became a central part of each day. I grew a practice of about one hour a day, each day.
Yoga helped me feel safe, forgetting about what I couldn't control and focusing on what I could actually control.
Since then, I never stopped. I still practice for an hour nearly every day and became a Yoga teacher to share all that it brought me over the last years, but that's a story for another time.
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