I wish I were exaggerating that title.
I’m not. 😂
At the time, I was working at the hospital when our marketing director, Karen, asked me to come to her office. Her doctor had told her she needed to try yoga because of some health issues she was having, but she was nervous about going alone.
And honestly, there was a reason she was nervous.
In the Christian world we were part of, there was plenty of conversation about yoga. And not the this is great for flexibility kind of conversation.
Yoga could be spiritually dangerous.
The poses had meaning.
There were spirits attached to it.
You needed to be careful what you opened yourself up to.
That kind of thing.
I had heard all of it.
But apparently I was feeling particularly brave—or particularly spiritual—because I told Karen something along the lines of, “Greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world.”
In other words: We have Jesus. We can handle yoga.
😂
So off we went.
I Was Watching for Trouble
The instructor was this wonderful, eccentric older woman.
The room was dark.
There was soft music.
Candles.
Incense.
Basically every ingredient necessary to make the version of me at that time wonder whether we were about to accidentally summon something. 😂
So while everyone else was probably thinking about their hamstrings, I was paying attention.
I was listening to what she said.
Watching what we were doing.
Noticing anything that might cross some invisible spiritual line I wasn’t supposed to cross.
But something unexpected happened.
Nothing bad happened.
The movements actually felt good in my body.
And the room didn’t feel controlling. The instructor wasn’t telling me what I had to believe. There wasn’t some secret moment where everyone pledged allegiance to a Hindu god.
It felt…permissible.
I could take what was useful and leave what wasn’t.
That was a pretty revolutionary concept for me.
Then I Met the Teacher I Actually Needed
After that, my friend, Amanda, and I decided to take another yoga class closer to my house.
I didn’t know it at the time, but this teacher was a real yogi.
And somehow, she saw me.
She recognized the places where I was blocked. The places where I was rigid. The places where discomfort immediately made me want to retreat.
And she encouraged me to stay.
Not force.
Not override myself.
Just stay curious a little longer.
One day she had us lie on our backs and simply notice our thoughts.
A thought could come into my mind…
and I didn’t have to do anything with it.
I didn’t have to determine whether it was good or bad.
I didn’t have to figure out where it came from.
I didn’t have to rebuke it.
I didn’t have to repent for it.
I didn’t even have to believe it.
It could just be a thought.
I cannot adequately explain how foreign that concept was to me.
For most of my life, thoughts mattered enormously. Thoughts could reveal the condition of your heart. Thoughts could become sin. Thoughts needed to be captured, examined, corrected.
And here I was lying on a yoga mat learning that a thought could simply float through my mind…
and leave.
I didn’t know anything about nervous systems then.
I didn’t know much about embodiment.
I certainly didn’t have the therapeutic language I have now.
I only knew something inside me was becoming curious.
Naturally, I Became a Yoga Teacher
Now, a reasonable person might have practiced yoga for a while.
Taken some classes.
Learned the poses.
Maybe bought a cute yoga mat.
Not me.
After doing yoga for only a few months, I decided to go to yoga teacher training.
Because apparently my approach to personal growth has always been:
Well, this is interesting. I should probably become certified in it.
😂
The training eventually included a retreat in Arizona.
I had to travel there by myself.
That was scary for me.
Really scary.
But I went.
And despite being relatively new to yoga and feeling like I didn’t know nearly enough, I completed the training and earned my certification.
Looking back now, the certificate isn’t the part that matters to me.
It’s the woman who got on the plane.
I Thought I Was Learning Yoga
I wasn’t.
Or at least, not only yoga.
I was beginning to learn something I wouldn’t have had words for yet:
My body could teach me things, too.
For most of my life, truth had come from outside of me.
Scripture.
Pastors.
Teachers.
Authority.
Someone who knew better.
My job was to listen, discern correctly, and obey.
Yoga quietly introduced another possibility.
What if I could notice?
What if discomfort wasn’t automatically danger?
What if a thought wasn’t a command?
What if my body wasn’t something I needed to control, distrust, cover, discipline, or transcend?
What if I could actually live inside it?
I wouldn’t have asked those questions then.
That understanding came much later.
At the time, I was just a very earnest Christian woman lying on a yoga mat, cautiously making sure no demons showed up.
And somehow…
I was beginning to find myself instead.
Looking Back
There are moments in our lives that don’t look revolutionary while they’re happening.
Nobody announces:
This experience is going to change the way you understand yourself.
Sometimes transformation is much quieter than that.
Sometimes it’s a yoga teacher saying:
Notice the thought. You don’t have to grab onto it.
And something inside you realizes for the first time:
Wait.
I have a choice?
That tiny realization would eventually become part of something much bigger for me—the long process of learning to trust my own body, my own knowing, and my own voice.
But it started here.
On a yoga mat.
Watching for demons. 😂