How I started on yoga

Seven years ago, I stumbled upon yoga when my friend first asked me to attend a hot yoga class with her. At first, I thought it would be insane to exercise in a room of 40 degrees, especially since I already have problems staying in sauna rooms for more than 2 minutes. 

However, in the spirit of friendship and insanity, I tagged along just to ‘see’ what was going on. Needless to say I couldn’t do most of the poses, it felt absurdly warm and one half hours just crawled by. However, what I felt after that was a nice sense of relaxation and calm (oddly enough), that was further accentuated even as I thought about the yoga class I had attended upon the hindsight of a week. 

I usually have a monkey mind, so much so that migraines are a chronic issue for me (think: migraines once every week at least). I was on medication to control these migraines, but with the onset of each attack, I would be out for at least half a day (if lucky) to recover. For someone used to moving around constantly, it became doubly frustrating to lose days just like that. 

That started my love for hot yoga, then I went on to Bikram yoga. It lessened my migraine attacks, down to about once every 2 months now. It was a relief also to be able to ‘zone out’ and have at least an hour and half where it would just be me and my mat. 

As I started doing only Bikram yoga, I became more aware of the perspectives of yoga teachers (had a brilliant one trained in Iyengar yoga) who did not encourage Bikram yoga, because they found the 26 postures too rigid, with no room for improvement, and who saw grave medical danger in excessively perspiring amongst other reasons.

I thus set myself a goal of achieving at least something in Bikram yoga (I took the 30 days challenge) – 30 straight days of Bikram yoga – before I told myself I would move on to explore other forms of yoga. Meanwhile I was also in love with the way yoga made me feel. 

This started me with my TT journey in Tirisula

– Audrey