I recently visited a special friend, one I met and completed my first yoga teacher training with in India. We were catching up on all our latest ventures and she remarked on my apparent “success”. To her, I was busy, my social media was bustling, I was teaching plenty and managing to survive off yoga as my full time job. That’s always the case isn’t it? Social media is the Queen of disguise. You can be whoever you want to be. You can look as busy and as successful as you want to look. You paint a certain picture of your life to the outside world, whether you intend to or not.
Anyway, life actually was going pretty well! I was rather busy and I was managing to “live my dream”, give up my day job and focus on teaching. But, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of missing out on my “purpose”. I felt like I knew I was on the path towards it. I knew it was within yoga and what I was currently doing, but something was missing.
I don’t know when the “aha” moment clicked inside of me. And I think the thought had been there in the back of my mind for a long while. But piecing together my interests within the yoga world, what I liked about teaching and the experience of some profound 1-1 work I had been doing with a client I found myself looking at Yoga Therapy Diploma courses.
The moment when I realised this was “it”, I might have found my purpose, was yesterday.
Involved in a community project offering yoga classes to those to whom classes are currently inaccessible to and/or may need yoga most in their life. These classes are for those unemployed, on low-income or struggling with long-term health issues; physical or mental. This class was the most humbling experience I have had in a long time.
On one hand, it hit a nerve. It took me back to a time when yoga would probably have been inaccessible to me and I may have needed it most. Although had I been offered the opportunity, I would have probably thought it a hilarious prospect anyway. A time when I very nearly reared off the track all together and had I done so, I may very well have never made it back. But, I got there without yoga and I found yoga when I needed it in my life elsewhere.
Coming back to my experience, it was truly profound. The initial “challenge” of holding the space for different people with different needs and different things going on in their bodies or minds was daunting. For a moment I had to question whether I was able or the right person to do so. But as the class started I felt I knew what the power of the practice itself held and let that guide me. I tried to remain calm, grounded and holding on to my sense of purpose. I felt it, I felt that sense of purpose and knew why I was there in that room and what these people in front of me probably needed from this experience. It was humbling. It was gratifying. It was full of purpose. It was what I had been looking for.
At the end, I closed the class and I offered a moment to remain still and quiet before moving into the rest of the day. No rush. I was used to people usually jumping up, gathering their bits together and scurrying off into the rest of their days. I opened my eyes to see that every single person was sitting still, eyes opened or closed but holding onto that last moment of stillness and silence. Every single person so obviously needed and/or wanted to hold onto that moment for as long as they could.
And with that, I knew, I might have just found my purpose.
