Yoga for me wasn't ingrained. It wasn't something I ever tried as a child nor if i'm honest did I ever think it would change my life in the way it did.
They say yoga finds you at a time when you need it and it did. My yoga journey began at my lowest point in life, struggling with an undiagnosed thyroid condition causing weight gain and shortness of breath and heart issues. I had been diagnosed with depression four years previously and was taking anti-depressent medication daily combined with upto 6 xanex a day to keep panic and anxiety attacks at bay. I was no longer leaving my apartment except for work and had withdrawn into myself.
A friend gave me a yoga DVD and insisted I try it at home, within a number of weeks I began to notice a change. My grandfather passed a few months later and my world flipped upside down.
I found a strength through yoga I never knew I had, I came off all medication and moved back to the UK. Pushing for a diagnosis it was discovered a had a tumourous growth in my thyroid that led to half of it being removed and shortly after I travelled to India to complete my teacher training.
Yoga provided me with an internal calm throughout practice which spilled into every part of my life. The eight limbs of Ashtanga yoga are ones I try my hardest to live by and by combining yoga and a keen interest in nutrition my life has changed.
The powerful transformative effect of yoga is something I will never be able to explain through words, it's a smile, a glint in a students eye, the sense of calm within a class during savasana, the strength of students who hold their heads a little higher and take risks they would never have taken in their work and social lives.
I simply hope whether it's with me or with another teacher than everyone at some point is able to experience it for themselves.