How I Started Yoga
How I Started Yoga
Irina Poli shares her personal experience with yoga and her teacher trainings.
I think it is time for me to finally share my yoga story with you guys. You all know that I'm a teacher but a lot of you don't know how I got into this practice, how I became a teacher, and how I deepened both my teaching and my practice over the years.
It started longer than a decade ago, when I was 22 years old. At that age, I started to get into learning philosophy, specifically Buddhist philosophy. It was my first time being introduced to the idea of mind control through breath and meditation. To me, as a young kid who dealt with a lot of depression and anxiety, this was so interesting! The idea that through repeated practice you could achieve some sort of control over your emotions was absolutely fascinating! That fascination led to me starting to learn more and more about the Buddhist tradition.
One day soon after this, I met a cool guy who was a Buddhist, who meditated regularly and for some reason took an interest in me. After a couple of dates, he asked me if I wanted to join him for a yoga class. I had no idea what yoga was at this point but he told me that it aligns with what I've been learning through Buddhist philosophy. Very interested, I said yes. The rest is history!
The first class that changed everything
The first class he took me to was my teacher's class (Leanne's class). This woman has such a gift of weaving philosophy through practice in a way that words can't describe. In that first yoga class, I connected to myself in a way that I had never experienced before. I remember getting home and just crying, not understanding why this practice brought up so many overwhelming emotions. It wasn't a sad cry, it wasn't a happy cry; it was just a universal release! In that moment, I knew I found something that I never wanted to let go of.
Things with that guy didn't work out, but he gave me one of the greatest gifts anyone's ever given me! He gave me the gift of yoga. I also want to say that I am incredibly grateful that I got to start my practice in a very traditional studio. All the teachers at that studio had been teaching for at least 15+ years and had an insane wealth of knowledge to share with us. I got to have teachers that were the students of some of the most world-renowned spiritual teachers. Our classes were 90 minutes long and all of them included breath work, meditation, and either mythology or philosophy teachings from the yogic traditions. The reason I fell in love with yoga, was not for the physical! I fell in love with yoga because of its deep spiritual roots and its ability to create more love and compassion in the world.
I absolutely loved every single teacher I had at the studio that I started my practice in, but there was one teacher who became extra special to me. Her name is Leanne and she is the teacher that I did all of my teacher trainings with. She was one of Ram Dass's close personal students when he was alive, and she truly lives and shares his teachings so powerfully with the world. Her specialty is alignment and yoga therapeutics. I went to every single one of her classes religiously because I loved how much I would learn in each and every class.
On boarding a Teacher Training program
Needless to say when she started her teacher training program I jumped on board and I was part of her second 200 hour training back in 2013. That teacher training changed the entire course of my life! That teacher training was so much more to me than just school; it was community with purpose, it was a self-development journey, it was group therapy, but ultimately it was a reclamation for my soul!
At the time that I was doing my teacher training, I was also in business school finishing up my bachelor's. Before teacher training, I had so many big plans of going out into the business world and doing marketing for big corporations. I look back at that idea now and I laugh. Doing teacher training and diving deep into my spiritual practice made me realize how shallow my wants were and where they actually came from. It made me realize that I did not want to do business at all, and in fact it almost repulsed me. I decided to finish my bachelors to make my parents happy, but I changed my entire career path.
A life-changing decision
Teacher training helped me get clear on what my Dharma is and why I'm here incarnated in this material reality. After the training, I changed my career path to work in the health and wellness industry. I got my personal training certificate, started working in studios and gyms, and a couple of years later I went back to my teacher and did my 300 hour training with her as well, specializing in yoga therapy.
Lots of things have happened since then, but my career journey in this field deserves a whole different blog post, which I will write later for you guys to read.
Today, I just wanted to share how I started my yoga journey and how much of an impact my teacher and my teacher training had on me! I wouldn't be teaching you guys today if it wasn't for that training completely changing my world around and making me give up everything safe and comfortable to step into the fear of the unknown in order to truly live my Dharma.
I'm so grateful each and every day that I am part of this beautiful community of yogis and that I'm in a studio that values traditional practice! I thank you all so much for being dedicated to your practice and for showing up on your mats to do the work!
See you on the mat!
Irina
