When I got asked to write a blog post about my journey to becoming a yoga teacher, I wasn’t entirely sure about what it was that I wanted to write. In fact, I found myself a little intimidated by the request because my initial thought and feeling is that my journey to becoming a yoga teacher is a short one: “I fell in love with yoga about a year ago, and now here I am.” As I sit here and reflect though, I know that nothing could be further from the truth. I know that my journey was actually a long and windy one.
A lot has happened in my life that has set me on this path to becoming a yoga teacher, but what I feel the main catalyst for me, was body image. For so much of my life I have struggled with feeling comfortable in my body. From the age of 6 I became aware of what feeling ashamed of one’s body looks like as I watched my sister purge and starve herself. I became aware of how others perceived my body when my mom’s friend got me into a fashion show and the designer asked me to suck my stomach in. I became aware of the fact that at the age of 12 I was wider and more developed than most girls, and taller than a lot of the boys. I remember feeling self-conscious about my pants size, not realizing that the lower half of my body changing was a normal part of puberty. So often I would feel ashamed of my body. I would workout obsessively, eat as little as possible, drink laxative teas, take photos of how I looked in bathing suits, and then still cover up my body with a tank top and shorts whenever I went swimming. Sometimes I would make up a lie that I had my period just so I could avoid being in a bathing suit altogether. It took me years to allow myself to feel comfortable in a bathing suit regardless of what I looked like, simply because I was tired of holding myself back from having fun.
This pattern of body consciousness followed me all the way into my adulthood. As I got older, I became aware of what it was like to have my body sexualized, and how different outfits gave me a different level of attention from men. At one point I only viewed myself as a body and questioned if a man would ever see me as more than that. My self-worth became centered around what my body looked like. If I gained weight I was unattractive, and if I was lean I was sexy.
Truthfully, this cycle still follows me today but it is what led me to yoga. One day I just decided that I was tired of feeling uncomfortable in my own skin, and ashamed of my body. I realized that it was up to me to change my reality, so like many people who wish to change their bodies, I got a gym membership. The gym membership led me to becoming a personal trainer at that gym. Becoming a personal trainer led me to becoming friends with a coworker who invited me to go to a donation based yoga class at a studio close by. I could have never known how much my life was going to change the moment I stepped foot into that studio.
Before that class, I had only ever done one 90 minute Bikram yoga class with my sister. Needless to say, this experience was significantly different. One class with Yoga 4 Change was all it took for me to be hooked. One class was all it took for me to make the decision to show up again and again every Sunday. I had just started finding consistency in my practice, and then COVID happened.
I wish I could remember what my exact thought process was when I decided to look up Yoga 4 Change on YouTube. All I know is I had no desire to end my practice because COVID wouldn’t allow me to go in person. I instantly found myself doing yoga every day. My practice blossomed, and I had cultivated a sense of peace and gratitude I had never known. I became amazed by what my body could do, and how yoga made it feel. I felt so much gratitude that I reached out to the one person I knew from Yoga 4 Change; the instructor from my in person class. It was that day, May 19th, 2020, that I shared with her how much I appreciated Yoga 4 Change, and that I loved yoga so much I could see myself being a teacher.
Me sharing that text sparked a friendship. That friend is the one who shared with me months later that Y4C was applying for a grant to create a trauma informed yoga teacher training program for 6 individuals. That was when I knew my moment had come. Everything that I have ever done and experienced in my life brought me to that opportunity, and I knew it was mine to take.
I spent weeks reflecting on what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it on my application. I changed the lock screen and background on my phone to the Y4C logo. I told myself it was mine because there was no other option. I said thank you in advance and felt sheer joy and gratitude for the experience I knew I was going to have, but also told myself that whatever is meant to be will be, and that it was okay if by some small chance it didn’t happen. I did this every day with the end date of November 5th in mind. The day I would know for sure.
I wish I could express the joy I felt when I opened my email on November 4th. I wish I could put into words the excitement and overwhelming sense of gratitude and full circle feeling I experienced when I read the email saying I was one of the six chosen out of many applicants a day earlier than expected.
I’m so proud of myself for getting here. I’m so grateful to get to be a part of an organization that had such a personal impact on my well-being. I’m so grateful to be able to use my personal experiences as a way to better teach people how to find peace and a deeper sense of self and connection to their bodies through yoga. My journey to becoming a yoga teacher was anything but short. Everything that I have ever done and gone through in life is what got me here, and I truly love where I’m at.
Blog written by Stefany Babain
