My path to yoga began in the gym, at USF where I was attending grad school to be precise, from 2002-2005. I had to find some respite from a stressful corporate job while finishing my masters in education.
Fast forward a few years later after the housing mortgage crash in 2008. All I wanted to do was yoga. I enrolled in the 200-hr Yoga Teacher Training at SF’s biggest yoga studio chain, Yoga Tree. There, I found 2 teachers amongst the 50+ whose classes I attended, who offered the most solid presence of themselves. Karl Erb and Darren Main. Karl, I learned years later was once the Director at IYISF. Darren, while not an Iyengar Yoga practitioner, had recommended Usha Devi in Rishikesh for first-time India-bound travelers.
In 2011, I left the corporate world and eventually attended Usha’s Iyengar Yoga Intensive at the Omkarananda Ashram. That was only after a whirlwind saga during my first 6 days in India. Somehow, I ended up in Srinagar, Kashmir, where I was tracing the footsteps of Paramahansa Yogananda. Shortly after, I made my way from a hospital in Delhi to attend 2 month-long intensives with the Chanchani’s, long-time Iyengar Yoga teachers in Old Rajpur, at the Himalayan mountain foothills. “Long time” in the Iyengar Yoga world, I came to learn means someone who has been immersed, whether teaching or practicing, for over at least a couple of decades. There at the Chanchani’s, a gigantic seed was planted in me to continue this path of Iyengar Yoga and uncover why practitioners in their 70’s were doing headstand with ease while I, in my youthful 40’s at that time was struggling and sweating after a minute in the pose. As I inch closer to their age, I am finding more ease and steadiness in and through sirsasana (headstand), and life in general.
Keep in touch with me via Instagram.com/beingmagi