Or Why I Quit Yoga
I could write just one sentence for it: “Just let it be”.
I shall add to it thought because really, what can you do when you find yourself in such a situation? I was shocked. And then again when I had to give up one of my dreams because it didn´t go together with the direction of life I am focusing on. That´s tough. I didn´t want to let go, I was attached. I was crying feeling like a little kid who´s got his favorite toy being taken away from him.
I´ll tell you how it was so that you can maybe use it in case you ever find yourself in a similar situation. This is a very personal story but aren´t they all…
I started doing yoga 16 years prior to this day. I didn´t even know it was yoga back then – I just needed something physical to do to feel stronger and more energized, so I found these exercises in Cosmopolitan magazine. Then came along Shape magazine where just 4 power yoga postures were pictured plus sun salutes outlined. There my yoga journey began.
It wasn´t easy, as the matter of fact it was tough and full of obstacles. The first teacher I found in my small town was a kundalini yoga teacher but I thought: “The hell with it, I want to learn yoga so I will study this.” Even though that wasn´t exactly what I wanted. Tons of money paid and a two years later in my course I talked to my co-student who had studied power yoga before – What? I wanted to study that! – and I asked her for that teacher´s contact details.
Turned out to be a great teacher. I paid more money and it took another year and I started teaching power yoga. To one student. To two students. Always girls I knew.
And so it went – that was the tough part of the journey: finding the clients. When I moved from one country to another it remained that way, but I was lucky to have a few great experiences years later when I went to a festival and taught a crowd of 80 or so people. I was lucky to be at a couple of retreats where I was able to share what I felt was my passion: uplifting people through yoga and meditation, through creative biodanza that I learnt later and through little sessions bringing people together where through simple practices they could come closer to themselves.
I taught a friend at her home for 2 years, week by week. We had great time together.
Then one day a few months ago “by accident” I found a video where a lady was explaining how yoga has to do with the occult. As of here you might decide to quite reading if you are a yoga lover because you might think it´s BS. I lost a close yoga friend due to that. But I will continue anyway.
I won´t go into detail; at that moment it made so much sense and it hit the spot. I was shocked. I was really shocked: my knees were shaking, I felt I wasn´t in a good state. Had to clear myself and let it go. That day I stopped practicing yoga. That day I stopped calling myself a yoga teacher.
The next morning I woke up with sadness, apathy and feeling a great emptiness. That´s where my ego felt stripped naked of my identity as a yoga teacher. I couldn´t associate myself with yoga anymore. So who was I then?! What was left of me? It was my passion for so many years, I was building up that path for so long, spent so much money, have been able to help people and now all that goes to waste?
That moment I had to let it be.
And nothing terrible happened. I felt like a layer of my ego was peeled off. That onion like thing that we call our identity: I am this and I am that. When it happens a great emptiness comes. And we need to fill it up as quickly as we can. And it was okay not to try to fill it up right away. I mean it happens anyway by looking for something else to do (reading, exercising) but yet the great realization that we are what we associate ourselves with, WOW, that´s a powerful realization when you loose that association and allow yourself to feel the void.
And that´s okay.
That´s actually a beautiful feeling, even though it´s scary. Because that´s when you realize that we are not who we believe we are, not what we create of ourselves. We are something else. As David Icke puts it: “We are a point of awareness, we are all there is and can ever be.” Ain´t that liberating?
So after this story what is my advice? It remains the same: let it be. And allow yourself to see what happens.
Would You Like Me to Uplift You? 