My First Vinyasa Class: I Sweat, I Shook, I Survived

"Yoga is a light, which once lit, will never dim.  The better your practice, the brighter the flame."

{B.K.S. Iyengar}

Source: Olivier Miche, Unsplash

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"You don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great." {Zig Ziglar}

I still laugh out loud when I picture myself in the middle of the first vinyasa flow class I ever took.  I've always been a slow-and-steady-wins-the-race kind of girl, and until that moment had been approaching my adventures in yoga in the same way.  For the first six months of my committed yoga practice, I was very studious--and very cautious.  I quickly found my niche in the beginner classes, which tended to fill the room with myself, one or two pregnant women, and 5-7 retirees, gray-haired and always in miraculously better shape than me.  I loved these classes.  I learned how to breathe, how to stand tall, and always left feeling at peace with my life.  I felt safe, supported, guided.  And my dear, dear teacher!  She was patient and encouraging--and she did good work, because there came a moment when I knew I had learned enough to  move on.

So, picture me, if you will...

I am in a flow class (whatever that means) and everything is very different.  There are, like, 60 people in this room.  And the music is kind of loud, but it's pretty cool.  And--wait, it seems like things are moving kind of fast here--don't I get a Child's Pose after Downward-Facing Dog??  ...Um, is anyone else hot?  I'm totally sweating.  Really, though, how is anyone keeping up with this?  I wish I had a towel--my mat is slippery.  Oh my god I'm so hot.  My leg is doing that weird thing where it shakes uncontrollably and I can't make it stop.  This is embarrassing.  Does anyone else think this is moving way too fast?  HANDSTAND.  People are in Handstand right now.  Great.  Get me out of here.  I don't belong in this class--big mistake.  

But it wasn't a mistake.  Twenty minutes into class, and only a few moments after I'd made the decision to never, EVER try a class that was so obviously out of my league, the teacher came to stand right beside my mat, and said, "Be light."  It was his way of instructing a graceful step forward, but for me, in that moment, its layers of meaning ran deep.  I felt so heavy: heavy in body, heavy in heart, heavy in mind.  Those two words, "be light," sliced through my fear, fatigue, and sense of failure, and I translated them as this:

Lighten up, it's just yoga.

I was inspired.  I let the beads of sweat drip into my eyes and ears and onto my $10 yoga mat that, come to find out, was NOT "sticky" at all, and I kept breathing and moving.  And at the end of class, when the instructor approached me to tell me I'd done well, I knew he was right.  I left that class feeling powerful, grateful, and light.

I went back.  Three days a week, for four years I went back to that class.  The instructor of that class became my first mentor, and his simple instruction, "be light," became my mantra.

After nearly a decade of mulling it over, letting it shrink and expand according to the necessity of the moment, I've developed a definition for my mantra that helps me focus on it's intention:

  { To me, to be light means }

I Love

I am Inspired

I've got Grit

I can Humor myself

I am Thankful

I do the work I do today because I want to share my life with you.  I want to connect with you, hear from you, grow with you. Just as be light guided me through my first trembling and terrifying vinyasa class, it shapes my work now. In everything I do, I ask myself: How have I experienced love?  Where have I found inspiration? How have I shown true grit?  What humorous thing has kept me laughing out loud?  What am I thankful for? 

I am relentlessly thankful that I took a chance and tried a yoga class that seemed totally out of my league. It was hard, hot, and slightly horrible, and I’ve never regretted it. Not once.

But I may have spent the rest of my life regretting, if I’d never tried.

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