How I Found My True Inner Yogi
I'm hoping my fellow yogis will back me up on the following statement: Becoming a yogi is a process, as any journey worth taking ought to be.
For better or for worse, the Western depiction of yoga often portrays the skinny blonde gal wearing her $88 pair of Lululemon pants, toting around her $58 Manduka mat, drinking exotic fresh juices, while attending her $15/day hot yoga class at some posh studio.
In fact, this was my belief for a long time and it kept me far away from “yoga”. Of course my views began to shift after I completed yoga teacher training and began discovering the true meaning of this ancient practice.
Many times we define what something is by redefining what it is not...
The moment I realized I was a yogi was not when I took my first vinyasa flow class and (quietly) whispered to myself "this is amazing"...
The moment I realized I was a yogi was not when I dropped more than $250 in one shopping trip on my first set of "yoga gear"...
The moment I realized I was a yogi was not when I took a leap of faith and signed up for yoga teacher training...
The moment I realized I was a yogi was not when I practiced asana every week or every day for that matter...
The moment I realized I was a yogi was not after I could count or recite names of poses in Sanskrit....
The moment I realized I was a yogi was not after I got through the Ashtanga Primary series without my "cheat sheets"...
The moment I realized I was a yogi was not after I could recite my favorite yoga sutras...
The moment I realized I was a yogi was not when I took the vow of Ahimsa...
The moment I realized I was a yogi was not when I could recite the Ashtanga opening invocation without being prompted by my teacher...
The moment I realized I was a yogi was not once I could write RYT behind my name...
The moment I realized I was a yogi was not after I taught my first private lesson...
The moment I realized I was a yogi was not after I began meditating with my mala beads every day...
The moment I realized I was a yogi was not after I started listening to kirtan...
The moment I realized I was a yogi was not once I could tell you which dosha I was...
The moment I realized I was a yogi was not when I decided I wanted to go on a spiritual retreat to India...
The moment I realized I was a yogi was not after I started and ended each day with an Om...
The moment I realized I was a yogi was not when I greeted my fellow yogis with a "Hari Om" or "Namaste"...
None of those moments mattered. I don’t dismiss the importance of those valuable milestones; they just didn’t impact my journey as one might expect.
I finally knew I was a yogi when I no longer cared if you called me one. It was when I stopped comparing the old me to the "new me" and once I woke up and discovered that this moment is all we really have. That’s when I become a true yogi. ...and then it happened again when I started to have these daily "a ha" moments...
Yoga is a journey that never ends. To be a yogi is to know oneness and to believe wholeheartedly that you are not separate from it.
It's to know that the state of enlightenment is fleeting.
To be a yogi is to know that your soul’s work is never done.
To declare, “I am a yogi” is unnecessary because what's true does not need to be qualified or validated by external proof...it simply IS.