Yoga Girl

I had been introduced to the practice of yoga during that one class I
took in ailand a few years earlier, but since I’d learned how to meditate,
there was something pulling me strongly toward this five-thousand-year-
old way of life that I couldn’t quite understand. I took my first yoga class in
Costa Rica with a teacher I’d met while hiking in the rain forest and I
absolutely loved it. is type of yoga was very different from the class I’d
taken in ailand (or maybe I was the one who had changed and become
different?). e presence I felt in the moment while slowly moving my
body from pose to pose and the peace that filled me in Savasana at the end
of class were different from anything I’d ever experienced before. I started
going a few times a week to a small yoga studio in town. I practiced with
several different teachers and tried different styles of yoga, but didn’t get
attached to a particular branch of yoga or a specific yoga teacher. I just
loved moving my body together with my breath! For me it was meditation
in movement. I started practicing every evening in the tiny shack I was
renting on the beach. I’d roll out the mat on the kitchen floor, not really
knowing if the poses I was doing were correct but simply doing what felt
right. I could feel my body softening, and I spent many, many yoga
sessions crying in hip-and heart openers. I had so much tension stuck in
my body after years of not treating it right! rough yoga, I started
unraveling the past, and little by little worked all the way to the center of
my own heart—a place I hadn’t been in touch with in many years. It didn’t
take long before I completely fell in love with yoga as a lifestyle and
started looking forward to every moment spent on the mat.
I didn’t need much and was happier than ever. Some mornings I’d
wake up and have to decide who was going to have breakfast—me or
Quila, a homeless puppy I’d adopted (she always won). It was okay. I
ended up staying in Costa Rica for two and a half years, and it was during
these years that I truly learned what happiness means. I had spent my
whole life thinking I needed to fill my days with things to improve my
“image.” I had to look good, wear lots of makeup, buy nice clothes, be
friends with the right people, have a skinny body, and so forth. As I peeled