My inspiration to practice yoga began over a decade ago. I was introduced to its potential to increase my awareness and improve my mental, physical, emotional and spiritual health. In writing this post I had hoped to strengthen my relationship to my practice for in spite of yoga’s many benefits I at one point faced many obstacles within my dedication. Yoga, you see, has always been there for me but I was not always there for yoga.

On a summer’s eve I attended my first class with curiosity and awe at a Bed & Breakfast along Chesterman’s Beach Road in Tofino, British Columbia. The pristine and remote town along the west coast’s peninsula played host to a community of artists, surfers, natural resources and service industry workers. My job in a resort restaurant gave me a place to earn my living while being new in town, experiencing both warmth and isolation, and living in its self-appointed “end of the road” culture. At the class, I faced challenge and humility but I knew it was good for me. During the walk back to my home along the dusty oceanside path I felt both exhilaratingly high on life and grounded in my entire body. This experience and its aftermath was the catalyst for seeking out more yoga. Tofino’s yoga community was less structured then than it certainly is now but I was able to attend drop-in classes at the community centre and at the sacred cedar-walled studio.

I had yet to reach a level of commitment required to create profound shifts in mind and body. However, my flirtation with drop-in classes and meditation sessions in the natural light of my home surrounded by the trees along the Pacific Rim National Highway has contributed to why I practice today.

The years that followed, after time in transcendent Tofino and a sequence of synchronicities in Vancouver I began to lose my balance. Just prior to returning to my hometown of Victoria I turned to yoga again. And while I wasn’t consistent with my practice it was right there for me when I needed it. No matter how choatic my life was and how much self-destructive behavior I engaged in, going to a yoga class was one constant that held the power to reset my self. Evenings alone with a bottle of wine or worse were less prevalent when I chose to attend a yoga class. True, there were instances when I would attend class and then feel so good I’d reward myself with that bottle of wine afterwards. Back then, for me, that decision usually didn’t end well. But the choice to practice led to gradual shifts in new habit formation. Steadily practicing more allowed me to honour a vow of sobriety. Today because my choices favour yoga, I am able to say I face fewer temptations than I once did. So apparently, yoga has always helped me when I didn’t know how else to help myself.

Because I was enjoying classes at my local sunlit studio in Victoria’s Chinatown so much I decided to get further involved by applying to do an energy exchange. For a weekly commitment of performing as receptionist at Moksana Yoga I received a free unlimited membership. With a more consistent practice I was beginning to understand the responsibility required in improving my own health. Not overnight but gradually through showing up for yoga I was becoming more conscientious and self-aware.

Where yoga has previously been shelter from the storms I’ve seen it is now becoming a port in which to stay awhile. And breathe. While practicing anything involves hard work that takes commitment and discipline it also requires true love in each movement and breath. Cultivating a personal practice becomes like tending to a beautiful garden. Given care and devotion, it will blossom with abundance. I am humbled to realize a yoga practice’s scope of difficulty yet I marvel at its gifts. I like the practice’s promise of eternity for never will there be a finish line in yoga. And right on time, I am realizing the dedication to my yoga practice is where I connect with the softness and strength that allows me to take myself into the world.