Bhavana {Cultivating your Greatest Self }
An approach to yoga through the heart & soul of Anna
I used to believe that I found yoga, that I stumbled upon the studio with the teachers that first gave me the roots and sparked my curiosity to learn more, to practice more, to continue through the poses one after another, each time learning a little bit more about myself. Yet, I would be lying, I never found yoga, yoga found me. I was around seventeen when I first attempted yoga as a practice that went beyond one time here and there. I needed continuity in my life and I wanted my routine to be found somewhere on a yoga mat. I was at a transformational part in my life and truly was seeking a change, for me at first I sought the exercise side of yoga, I sought out the benefits it would enhance on my physical body, little did I know that was the least of my life it would impact. I remember being in the midst of a juice cleanse at the time, it was a span of 26 days that I fasted on organic juice, I was in desperate need of an awakening. I attended heated yoga classes and loved how it made me sweat, how my muscles and my body ached for more after each class ended. I toured yoga studios around my little beach town, Encinitas, in the larger community of San Diego, California. Encinitas is known for having some of the most influential yoga studios in the world,also for having so many in such a small area.
After many trials, no errors to say, just many trials of finding teachers I enjoyed, there was still something not feeling right, each studio I went to was wonderful, filled with inspiration, and the ability to make me feel, yet none of them felt like home. That is until I began my time at Soul of Yoga. A local studio that is also a phenomenal yoga institute, one of the few yoga therapy schools in the world. I didn’t yet know this at the time, my idea of yoga was nothing to do with emotional, it was all physical at first. I felt as if for the first time my body began to speak to itself. I would walk out of each class feeling stronger, feeling lighter, feeling more balanced. My feet felt more connected to the earth that it stepped upon, my head felt lighter and almost as if the clouds itself carried me with each breath I took. The Soul of Yoga took me beyond, it allowed my yoga mat to become the magic carpet that I had only believed to exist in my dreams. I was transported each moment, my body began to speak to not only my exterior, but to each cell of my being. My mind began to ask questions, it also began to become quiet. For someone that had constantly thought that she allowed her mind to be free, I never realized how trapped I felt. I was stuck in the same thoughts, in the same pain that occurred over and over.
Throughout the turmoil and upheaval that existed within my home life, I began to feel safe and loved within the square footage of the Soul of Yoga, but beyond that I felt safe on my mat. I felt awakened by the possibility that there was a life beyond the pain, the physical and emotional. I felt an awakening to an Anna that I had dreamed of, but had never met. I kept returning back to Soul of Yoga, until I graduated and moved away. I began my first year at university in Seattle and I lost touch with myself once again. Had I known it would have been that easy to lose myself I would have bought a million and one yoga mats and placed them in every crevice of my life if I had known. I had no idea how without yoga, without the silence, and the love that my practice gave to me, I would feel empty.
I met incredible friends within this first year, but I still felt lost, disconnected not just from myself, but this life. I felt a hatred and darkness that stirred within me. I tended to those fires with negative thoughts and actions that kept me numb. I was almost nineteen and it was the end of the school year, I had resolved and truly felt at peace with the thought that my time had come, I was no longer willing to live this charade that I believed my life had become. I had felt this darkness before, yet somehow this time I felt no emotion, I wasn’t in tears, I wasn’t angry, I was just completely numb and let the darkness become the driver in my life. I was hospitalized by my university for suicidal ideation and within those four white cell like walls I was trapped. I was trapped with myself and I hated myself, for allowing my life to become this. I hated that I had no real choice, or say in what was to become of me. I was truly alone, I was truly without freedom, and there as I sat being the monkey who was poked and prodded I felt a sense of urgency to escape. I wanted to run, yet I didn’t want to just run from myself, I wanted to run from each person that ever hurt me, that ever allowed me to feel as though living in the realms of the darkness was the only way to survive.
I escaped to Europe a couple short weeks after my hospitalization and there I began to feel what this life had in store for me. I lived at first in London with my sister and brother-in- law, from there my sister and I spent months traveling throughout Western and Central Europe. I then traveled on my own, beginning with the U.K. I started from King’s Cross and boarded a train that took me to Cardiff, Wales. I was inspired from there to fly to Edinburgh where I felt the magic continued. I felt alive while I climbed atop Arthur’s Seat in the fog and the mist, I was alone with my mind, and I was content with this silence, this calm that I found within the storm that had become my life. I continued to Ireland and then back to London before I returned back to California. I took classes at home and began to find my yoga practice again. I returned to the Soul of Yoga and felt the light return to my body. At the end of that year, I meditated and wrote my New Year’s resolutions and dreams. I wrote in bolded letters, I will dedicate my life to seeking the magic, I will return to Europe, and I will find myself through yoga and through each new place that I step foot in.
That night after I closed up my journal, I put on my sparkly shorts and my sparkly boots in honor of the new year and walked into my beach town with my family and friends. I felt the urge to indulge in an organic vegan chocolate milkshake so I stepped into a local café and ordered. While in line, I caught a family out of the corner of my eye, the daughter seemed to be mesmerized by my boots, I smiled and the mother smiled back beginning a conversation with how much she adored my sparkle. Whether it be the attire I chose, or the fact that she saw a part of my soul, I smiled, and began talking with them. Within a short twenty minutes, they had told me their life’s work, they owned and ran a yoga retreat center in Austria. I shared my love story with yoga and they offered me a job.
A few weeks later after the I’s were dotted and the t’s had been crossed I bought a one-way ticket to Austria. This is truly where I wanted to believe my journey would begin, but what I had once thought would be a series of struggles and then result in the rest of my life being utter bliss, I was mistaken. I was not mistaken that my life would be filled with blissful moments, I was mistaken that my life would be without further struggles and further challenges. My journey began from my birth, yet I wasn’t fully awakened until I allowed the light to seep into each crevice of my life and exude from each pore of my being.
I moved to Austria and said Auf Wiedersehen to the life I had once known. A life where I sat in the front row of a roller coaster, that dragged me through the ups and downs with little care to what I screamed, or cried. I began my work in Austria living out of a small cottage alone in the woods. This was the solitude of my dreams, yet I constantly felt as though something was missing, a part of my soul had still not arrived, or had not yet awakened. I withstood criticism and manipulation of myself through the family with whom I worked for at the yoga center. I spent a short few days away in Berlin and Prague and there began to yearn for more time to myself, for less of the meaningless work and to be fulfilled by something much deeper. I asked and then pleaded to go away for my birthday. The previous year had been a suicidal attempt and also the year before that. I knew that this was to be different, this was something I needed to fight for. I would be twenty and this would develop into an era of beginnings.
I bought a one way ticket to Santorini. I spent a couple days on the small island of Santorini swimming in the blue sea and driving along the coast that outlined the entire community. I had no plans and I was content with just being. One night while I watched the sunset I spoke with some people that told me about a lighthouse, a lighthouse that was supposed to be secret from anyone but the locals, but that it was something that I should see. They gave me instructions on how to get there without any real clear direction to start in. I got lost again and again, finding beaches, finding the end of the island, and finally when I was about to give up I saw a “light”, or so I thought in the distance. I felt a nudge to drive down this dark road and see if this is where the lighthouse was.
After driving for awhile I came across a large gate. I turned the car off and got out. I found my way through the gate and climbed up these rocks to find myself on the edge of a cliff. I felt the mist from the sea on my lips and the darkness surrounded me until I looked up and saw the lighthouse, going around and around, lighting each dark corner of the sea. I fell to my knees and broke down in tears. I could not contain the sobs that ached from within. I just sat there and cried, I felt the wind begin to wipe away my tears and the mist cleanse my skin after a lifetime had passed, I found my feet and I began to dance with the wind as my lead. I knew what I had to do, I screamed, I laughed, I cried more, and for the first time in forever felt as though I was ready to say yes to this life, to allow my chapters to begin with me as the author instead of the character who was told from page to page what to do, what to say, and what to feel.
I returned back to Austria after a few mesmerizing days island hopping in Greece and soaking up the love the locals had to offer. I returned with a new mission and a new courage within me that was ready to be released. I was shaking when I gave my notice that I would be quitting. I hated the thought that I was quitting, I had never quit anything before in my life. I had lived my life fearful of ever disappointing anyone. I realized by this mindset though that I had quit myself a long time ago and had been disappointing the true person that mattered the most in my life, myself. I found a difference though in the way I felt once released, it ended with dreadful terms and the negativity of the owners trying to get away with not paying me for the months of work I had done for them. Finally, I escaped, I headed off with a one way ticket to Milan where I had family friends who had a loft empty where I would be able to stay to find my grounding.
From Milan to my life, I set off throughout the rest of the year traveling around Europe, from the cliffs of Norway where I stood atop a boulder three thousand feet in the air to the seas that I dove deep into. I found myself along the way. I loved myself each step of the way. I retrieved my yoga and found that the poses accompanied me whenever I felt alone, whenever I sought to “arrive” I found myself with my hands in prayer, I found myself with my roots in tree pose, and my awakenings with my dancer pose. I danced across Europe and it was not until I realized that the next step I desperately needed to take was leading me right into the next chapter of my life.
I headed back to California and the day after I arrived I moved to Malibu to begin a 200-hour intensive yoga teacher training. I felt one of my deepest struggles with my practice outside of a class was the flow, the beauty of just allowing my mind to turn off and my body to take over going from pose to pose. This yoga training gave me that and so much more. Yoga gave me the trust I lacked in my body to try new things, to trust that my mind truly had at one point more control in my life than I ever decided to allow it to have again. Yoga gave me the ability to laugh at myself, to fall down, and pick myself back up, to find safety in my mat once again, and to continue seeking to further myself deeper and deeper. My teachers were incredible, they gave me support that helped me to gain confidence and accept that where I was at this moment was okay, that the strength and the flexibility within my physical body would come, but that within my mind it already existed and needed to be set free. One of my teachers told me something that stuck with me after the years had passed, after I graduated, and received my teaching certification.
The wisdom she imparted on me was to show up. No matter where I was each day, no matter where my mind had taken me, where my body had lead me, I needed to find my mat, find my practice, and just show up. This gave me the deepest understanding of what life is, to be present for each moment, each breath. To show up not only for my yoga practice, for my meditation, but for my life.
My chapter now begins with my heart opening up to share not only my story, but my practice. The practice that has healed me, has pushed me to grow, and allowed me to accept myself for whoever I am in the moment that I bear witness to. I am creating a style of yoga that focuses more on the internal healing and less on the asana, or movement. I want to instill the pranayama, the breath as the life force and awaken the chakras from the root chakra to the crown chakra. I will use teachings from yogi masters before my time and of my time. I will follow the guides of the Yamas and the Niyamas. I will incorporate the anatomy of our physical and emotional. I will allow psychology to be a teacher and help me to delve beyond the personal and prove that yoga can be one of the greatest healers, one of the greatest teachers, and one of the most incredible ways to incorporate magic into your daily life.
This yoga therapy is centered for each individual no matter the age, the size, the gender, the cultural beliefs, or the race. If you have a soul that is silent and a body that is aching then begin a journey with me hand in hand, mat side by side to a life that you will never want to stop living.
Beginning of the Rest of Your Life 