Yoga changed my life

There was once a time not long ago when I would be sitting staring out the window of my local watering hole on Queen Street or from the picnic table in the park where I spent afternoons doing my multimedia work while waiting to pick up my son from school.

I would see people walking or biking past carrying their rolled up yoga mats.

Being a die hard hockey and football fan my entire life, I thought yoga was a sport for women but,  I was wrong…

Once I moved to Collingwood, I met a woman who was a yoga instructor. She was the first yoga instructor I’d ever met and suggested we attend a yoga class together.

I was very reluctant because of my closed-mind and limited beliefs about yoga but decided to give it a try and took my first yoga class in January 2014.

It was not exactly what I had expected it to be, it exceeded my expectations and I loved going to this place, lie down on a rubber mat and do strange movements with unusual names like Happy Baby, Cat Cow, Downward Dog or Shavasana! A place where I could get a quick nap in seemed like an awesome place!

Not long after I started practicing yoga, I began to notice that I was losing weight, my thinking was clearer and more focused, my mood had improved, my balance had improved. Something was happening to me by coming to yoga classes, something great.

I had found a cool place to go where I could clear my mind, meet women and get healthy and fit and I was accepted. It become a part of my daily routine and was a great place to go each morning instead of my regular routine.

What I didn’t realize until many years after was how grateful I was to the woman who took me to my first yoga class when I was overweight and in desperate need of a change to my lifestyle.

Changing how I thought about yoga lead me to experience new things, opened my mind, my body to relax, breathe, stretch, be in the moment, meet new people and challenged me in ways I could never have imagined and it was helping me lose weight.

Once I had improved at yoga, I joined a more advanced yoga class and from there I noticed people taking spinning and circuit training classes and signed up for those and loved it. The classes were high energy, fun and full of amazing people, just what the doctor ordered.

That lead me to become a personal trainer and help other people like myself to lose weight and make changes to their lifestyle.

If you have never tried yoga before, I seriously recommend that you do.

Yoga changed my life for the better and it might do the same for you.