Why Yoga?

One of my favorite regular readers recently asked a great question... why yoga? Of all activities that I've participated in, why would I choose this one to focus so much of my attention on?

This question will take a long time to answer so it will be something that I will have to come back to in future posts. Let's start with how I discovered it.

In Alma (winter 2002), I had this boyfriend who's dorm room with just across the way from mine and I would watch for his light to come on... he was home... and I would visit him and he had this wonderful book, Yoga: The Spirit and Practice of Moving Into Silence that he would read and then move his body. Sometimes he would let me join him.

In Berkeley (spring-fall 2004), walking down Shattuck Ave or Telegraph Ave, we would walk by several yoga studios/schools. They would have flyers outside their doors and occasionally I would pick one up and ponder attending a class. I never did.

In Berkeley (spring-summer 2005), we lived about 5 blocks away from an Elephant Pharmacy which had a video rental section. $1 DVD rentals for 1 night. Every time we went there I would notice the shelf with all of the workout videos. Pilates, Yoga, Kick Boxing, Step. I was already interested because the store had this huge display right by the entrance of all of their fancy workout equipment: mats, straps, blocks, balls, books, and dvds. Not wanting to buy anything without trying it out first, I opted for renting a couple dvds. I would watch them over and over... and eventually I would do the sequences without the dvds... and the cheesy background music.

In Oakland (may 2006), I asked around to a few friends for yoga studio recommendations. One friend talked about her Bikram experiences. But she said that a beginner shouldn't really attend. Another friend recommended Piedmont Yoga Studio to me and then took me to a couple classes with her favorite teacher. He quickly became my favorite teacher too and I have attended classes with him ever since. I even purchased my own yoga mat at a Long's Drug Store.

In Oakland (summer 2006 and after), I started to read yoga journal's website and started to practice on my own at home following sequences that I found in articles or some that I made up on my own. Eventually, I got my own subscription to yoga journal magazine. I made a commitment to myself to take one class a week (I allowed myself to spend money on myself... that's certainly a topic for another post) and I started purchasing a class "package" or "series" every two months.

In Oakland, (spring 2007) I applied for the program and we all know the story from here.

So, next before I write about why I chose yoga, I will start with why not other things.