I did not start yoga as a dancer or a gymnast or a runner or any kind of athlete.
I was actually kind of a klutz as a kid and preferred books to sports. I was lost outside my body somewhere. I could see my body when i looked in the mirror but it didn’t really feel like me. Like I was looking at me the way someone else would and assessing. All the time assessing.
When I started yoga it was because I was a kinda messed up 20 year old who needed some kind of positive coping mechanism. Yoga seemed to offer a way to move my body (exercise) and had a kind of mysticism that appealed to me and that promised inner peace.
30 years later I still see yoga as a path to real embodiment. To being in the body as opposed to watching it. It is still my most positive coping mechanism to be honest.
The poses have changed and so has my body.
Inner peace mostly alludes me still but at least I know
I am more than my thoughts
more than my beliefs
more than my personality all of which, to some extent, are culturally determined.
I see the vastness of my own nature sometimes and other times it is concealed from me.
This is the dance now. And I’m leading or following depending on the day.