JILLIAN

‘Like many, this has been a painful period for me. Due to trauma unrelated (and related) to the pandemic, I go through waves of deep depression. Sometimes I feel my physical body lock up and I feel almost unable to move from my bed. It is through the seat of the teacher that I am able to find the softness, openness and the humanity to continue on. I have found that serving others is the fastest way to feeling better and I am so grateful for the opportunity to continue to teach and build community during the difficult time, no matter how different it looks.’

JOANNA

“Moja praktyka uległa zmianie, dlatego nie czuję, że muszę być doskonała w każdej pozycji. Słucham mojego ciała.”

WES

“My mental health struggles helped me find yoga, or yoga found me. I found it at work, at this rehab I worked at.. but this is almost less important rather that I was in a major and traumatic transition point in my life and I felt it, WOW, a flood of emotions and energy, life.. light shoot through me. I remember telling my therapist who just did not get it.. I think I just felt spirituality. I was in tears.. it felt so good to feel connected. It was like getting shackles taken off after over 15 years of them holding me back. It was freedom. It was new life and energy. It was like the “magic pill” all the psychiatrists were trying to prescribe to fix me, but it came from within me.”

ALISON

“I’ve been practicing yoga on-and-off since I was twelve when my mom brought me into a class during a family summer vacation. Towards the end of highschool and into the beginning of college I began to get more serious about my practice when I started struggling with anxiety, waking up nightly with panic attacks but without any support from trusted adults or anyone to talk to about what was happening. So I didn’t know they were panic attacks. I just would wake up, bolt upright in bed and my mind no longer felt like my own. I was shaking, I would get sick to my stomach, and I was terrified. I had no idea why it was happening but I was losing weight and my dad started to think I’d developed a drug problem due to the rapid weight loss that came along with this mental torture.”

DANA

“When I was 20 or 21 years old I was introduced to yoga by my brother, which was unlikely introduction. He took me to a traditional Ashtanga studio in Somerville, MA. I remember the class feeling incredibly long and I was humbled by my physical limitations, in spite of being in good cardiovascular shape. I had never seen adults outside of gymnastic competitions and performance arts who were as limber as the seemingly “normal” appearing people in this class. The room was slightly warm, comfortably packed with an eclectic crew of women and men and smelled of patchouli. My brother next to me was the least flexible person in the room, but he was engaged in every aspect of class and witnessing his willingness to participate fully with having much less range of motion compared to those in the room also gave me space to be ok with what I was and was not able to physically or mentally.”

PETE

“My life was taken from me, then given back to be reconfigured. Thirty nine years ago, when I was 19 years old, I suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident. I was propelled from the car traveling at a high rate of speed after we hit the base of a bridge going over the interstate we were driving on. My body was found 150 feet from the car and the emergency crew pronounced me dead at the scene. Apparently, God had a different path for me. A friend of my family (a rescue team member) happened to be driving by and decided to try again to find some life in me. They found a heartbeat and got me to the local hospital, where after no success, they immediately sent me to the nearest medical center with brain injury experience. This was risky since there was very little chance of me even surviving the ride. However, I did arrive, but in very serious condition and deeply comatose. They had to drill my skull to relieve the pressure, I underwent five hours of brain surgery, plus had a punctured lung, bruised kidney and fractured skull. After surgery, when most of my frontal Love was removed, the temporal lobe was stitched up, the lung and kidney patched up and I was connected to multiple machines to keep me alive I was moved to super intensive care. It’s said that I was the first one to come out of that place alive.”

TRISH

“I stopped practicing for 7 years because I was frustrated with how capitalist the practice was and I struggled with what my role was as a white person practicing yoga. I most certainly didn’t teach it. But, eventually, I became very energetically out of balance and I was trying to figure out what worked for me. I knew yoga had helped so I decided that ethically for me the only was to do it was to go deep and really, actually learn about it—the philosophies, the context, etc. So, I would say that now sometimes I forget people view yoga as “exercise” and that I can be viewed as a “fitness instructor” because the asanas are a physical body maintenance for me that allows me to tap into my higher self.”

MEREDITH

“It’s already happening, but I would like to see Yoga in the West move beyond Asanas. We need more Kirtan (music) and Karma Yoga (selflessness.) Because what the world so desperately needs right now is more compassion and more appreciation for simple things. Even the United Nations is telling people that the best way to reduce carbon emissions is to eat a plant-based diet. The world is telling us to make better choices and to take better care of our fellow beings, and cultivate gratitude for basic things, like clean air and clean water. It’s an invitation to see the divinity in Nature and our surroundings. “Simple living, high thinking,” as Swami Sivananda taught. We need to stop our mania of trying to find happiness by accumulating things and achieving things. It’s the only way to save ourselves and our planet.”

CHRISSY

“After that first YTT day of handstands I remember my hands were sore. I had never felt that before. I remembered laughing so much I cried and that it had been a while since I laughed like that… In the beginning I was enthusiastic to say the least (borderline obsessed) with practice. I was practicing everyday either at home or in the studio, once and sometimes twice in a day. I felt great! The learning of sequences, history, language, anatomy, meditation and otherwise sparked my student soul. At university I dreaded the teachings, the spaces and the system. At YTT I couldn’t get enough.”

LIZZIE

“When I graduated from college and began my first post college job in a law firm, I found the transition from college to work life so difficult that I often had a hard time getting out of bed in the morning and regularly slept through several alarms. I decided to start practicing yoga again because I remembered I always feel better after class.”

JULIE

“I think there’s a misconception that yoga teachers are these magical, spiritual beings who have it all figured out. I know that for me, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. I struggle with anxiety and depression and feel as though I’m still searching for that “supreme joy” even though I know that I need to stop searching in order to find it. Yoga helps me to be a better, kinder person but it’s not a cure-all and I think that’s important to differentiate. Just because we have yoga as a tool for self-love and self-inquiry doesn’t mean that it’s the only tool out there.”

SASHA

“I had a difficult relationship with my birth mother. There was a lot of fear and uncertainty when living with her and through my formative years. She was physically abusive and manipulative. After finally moving to live with my dad, I had a lot of anger and confusion.”

LAURA

“Meditation taught me how to find calm within myself. I would leave the center with peace. It didn’t always last very long -- I don’t mean to imply that it was an instant cure to my very big sadness. But it did teach me that it was okay -- even wonderful -- to be still and to be present. I didn’t have to take planes, trains, automobiles, or drugs to escape my pain. Those things usually didn’t work anyway. I just had to come home to myself.”

“I began to read. A lot. The first yoga book for me, “Fierce Medicine” by Ana Forest cut me open, Forest naming things I was unable to articulate and strengthened my desire to explore recovery and yoga. I was sexually assaulted at 13 and what followed was 22 years of drinking, cutting, and a vicious eating disorder. Poetry began to play an enormous role in my home practice. Rupi Kaur and Yung Pueblo have given me hope and the words to describe my healing. I would read and then flow. Everything about me had been compartmentalized and labeled. As my understanding of the practice grew I began to feel whole. Not until I was 36 years old had I ever
genuinely content with myself. I began to tap into my strength and see a woman who was putting herself together, finding beauty in my perfectly imperfect journey. I no longer thought that I was forever broken and damaged.”

JILL

“In the beginning I was more focused on progress where now I am able to be present and enjoy.”

CHARLOTTE

​“Yoga always gives me exactly what I need if I stay long enough to listen. For example, if I am seeking peace, my practice may give me peace, but may come first in the form of awareness. If I am resisting myself and life and seeking peace, the awareness will be uncomfortable, and first may feel like chaos, but being with that may lead to peace. Yoga has taught me that if I stay with the practice, my feelings will transform into surrender which ultimately leads to peace.”

ASHLEY

“The teacher who has meant the most to my process these days is Theresa Wynne, the creator of Story Yoga, the 200 hour YTT I graduated from this April. Without her, I would not be a certified teacher as it was not within my financial means or scheduling allowance, even though it was something I’d been wanting to do for years. Her dedication to making yoga and teacher trainings available to those in unfortunate situations and affected in someway by addiction shows her selfless nature and speaks to her desire to make change on a global level. She inspires me to want to be a better person, yoga teacher, social worker and friend. She made me feel whole again by accepting me, all of me, during a time when things truly had fallen apart. The bits and pieces of me strewn out in front of her during those long teaching hours, and she so delicately supported me in picking them up and placing them, with intention, where they belonged. I’m not sure I’d be back on my feet again right now if it weren’t for my weekends spent in Wellness Collective, in the graces of Theresa Wynne and our classmates. An experience I wouldn’t trade for the world.”

KAYLEIGH

“If I had to describe my first couple of years of consistent yoga practice into a few words they would be: hard, structured and forceful. I was practicing like an athlete. Eventually along the way I began to soften towards myself. I was more patient and forgiving. I started to replace expectation for the practice with gratitude. And now, my practice is much less about me and much more about the world I exist in. I’m trying to give more, love more, serve more. I think that’s where a lot of Western yoga practitioners get stuck; their practice remains completely focused on themselves when, if you allow it, it can do so much more. We have a larger capacity for giving than we think we do.”

GABRIELLE

“What has really kept me going with yoga is my battle with anxiety. Even from a young age I struggled with it, being borderline OCD, there are times when it completely took over my life. Practicing yoga regularly reminds me that I can deal with those anxious feelings. I can accept the waves of fear, discomfort or stress because I know it will eventually pass.”

CHRISSY

“After college I was still working full time in the restaurant world so I started looking into other options. Someone told me about VSAC, which grants money for low income Vermonters to complete non-degree programs. Finances had always kept me from yoga, so I figured this would be a great way to immerse myself in the practice for cheap and learn how to do it on my own. I had no intention of becoming a yoga teacher.”