Third Time Is a Charm
Meet Coleen: I can’t begin the telling of my yoga story without first admitting that this is the third time in my adult life I have tried practicing yoga. My first try was over a decade ago in a multi-purpose gym setting. I was a serious gym rat in those days – the most physically fit I have been since my teen years as a dancer – and spent an average of an hour and a half, six days a week working out. Yoga was offered before my favorite crazy-intense cardio classes and I would spend 30 minutes on the treadmill, take the 30-minute yoga class and then take that hour cardio class. I proclaimed at that time that was “just not a yoga person.” Well, no one in that class was a yoga person! A half hour class in the parentheses of intense cardio was not an ideal yoga introduction.
Fast-forward about five years. No longer a gym rat, I became overweight. I was also dealing with lots of personal, emotional issues and struggling with severe depression and anxiety. Although my therapist had suggested yoga, I wasn’t in a place where I wanted to do much of anything. A friend was going through her own baggage-shedding/weight-loss journey and convinced me to go to a class at Greenville Yoga. It was a Sunday morning class, very crowded and I felt like the entire class was watching the fat girl struggle (which was totally untrue).
My depression and anxiety continued. I changed jobs, kept at therapy and added a psychiatrist and many medications into the mix. Finally, I managed to make it “over the hump” and started to heal my aching heart and mind. I still had that body to deal with though. One who now fell into the obese category, suffered from severe back, neck, and joint pain, and hovered at the high end of normal ranges for both blood pressure and blood sugar. My roommate and I decided on a whim to take a belly-dancing class, and, for whatever reason (I guess maybe I was motivated by movement?) I convinced her to give yoga a chance while I gave it a third try (a second try at Greenville Yoga).
That was in May of 2017 and I am still practicing with Greenville Yoga nine months later. Why now? What’s the difference?
Well, first and foremost, I was in a process of emotional healing and found that once my mind and heart were exposed to positive changes yoga only served to intensify those feelings. I spent a good portion of my first two months practicing a lot of Shavasana and Balasana…in other words laying down and catching my breath. As time moved on, I found my body getting stronger and my face getting less scrunched up in concentration.
That brings me to the second reason I have continued practicing. I found “my people”. All the teachers I have encountered at Greenville Yoga are amazing but there are two that cemented in me the need to succeed in a subtle and encouraging way. I ended up in these classes purely by happenstance – they fit with my schedule – but I stayed because Caroline and Matt speak to my soul. Their classes are vastly different and their teachings are unique from one another, but both teachers have some qualities that have made me want to continue this journey: understanding and encouragement.
Over the past nine months there have been periods of time where I became discouraged with my 40-something-year-old body. I have had vacations and illnesses that have kept me from the studio. But, I keep going back. I have learned that I don’t need to spend six days a week at the gym killing myself to be healthy. Some weeks I can only make it once, other weeks I make it three times…and that’s OK. I haven’t lost a tremendous amount of weight or made some commercial-worthy physical transformation…and that’s OK. I still struggle with anxiety and depression and have classes where I just can’t shut off my brain…and that’s OK. What I have done, and will continue to do, is change my body from the inside out. And that’s OK.
