How I Found Yoga Before I Knew What I Was Looking For

How my first yoga class became the beginning of a practice that has lasted more than 20 years

People come to their first yoga class for all kinds of reasons. Some are looking for a way to move their body, manage stress or find a little more space in their day. Others arrive because someone invited them.

That was me.

My first yoga class wasn’t part of a plan to become a yoga teacher. I wasn’t searching for a spiritual practice or thinking about how yoga might change my life. In fact, I didn’t particularly want to go.

More than 20 years later, I can look back at that first class and see the beginning of a practice that would eventually shape how I move, teach, study and understand myself.

The funny thing is that there was nothing particularly remarkable about the setting.

My First Yoga Class

My best friend asked me to come to a yoga class with her.

If I’m totally honest, I really did NOT want to go. I wasn’t interested in yoga, and spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get out of it.

But I went, because well…that’s what you do for your friends.

I’ve been blessed over the years to practice in some of the most beautiful places in the world. That is not how I would describe this experience.

It wasn’t the serene studio many of us have come to know. It was the early 2000s and the class was held in a carpeted room in the local community centre. Let me be really clear, there was zero ambiance. No candles, no soft lighting, no beautiful floors or curtains.

It was ordinary. An ordinary room, filled with ordinary people who all seemed completely comfortable being there.

We found a spot near the front of the room, rolled out our mats and I quietly prepared to hate every single moment.

What Surprised me About Yoga

The first thing that surprised me wasn’t the stretching but the freedom in how I moved my body.

No one told me there was only one right way to move. Every pose had options, everything was an invitation.

An invitation.

“If it serves you,” “If it feels right,” and the permission to “stay right where you are.”

I don’t think I ever responded to the movement itself. I was responding to the possibility that I didn’t have to become someone else in order to belong.

Then came Savasana.

If you remember the first time you took a yoga class and were asked to take Savasana, you probably felt a little bit like me in this moment. What am I supposed to do?

But something shifted in those few minutes lying on the cold floor. I don’t think anyone had ever given me permission to do absolutely nothing.

Lying there, I was told that this was part of the practice. All I know is that in those few moments, something inside me exhaled. I left that class with something I still can’t quite explain. I wasn’t excited or even certain that I wanted to know more about yoga, but I was curious.

And apparently, curious was enough.

The practice that followed

That ordinary class became a daily practice, and eventually something much larger than I could have imagined at the time.

In the full essay, I write about the years that followed, what kept bringing me back to yoga, and the idea from Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras that I’ve come to appreciate differently after more than two decades of practice.

[Continue reading the full essay on Substack →]

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I write about yoga, practice, teaching and what I’ve learned from more than 20 years of returning to the mat.

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