My Yoga Journey

Many moons ago (however many it takes to get us back to around 2007), I tried yoga for the first time. I was working as a dog groomer back then, and there was a coffee shop just down the street where I’d go for coffee in the mornings (or really, whenever).

One of the baristas was also a yoga teacher. She was super nice, and we became friends. I kept telling her that I really wanted to try yoga, and after saying that for a while, I finally made it to a class. It was a vinyasa class, which is a style of yoga that links movement with breath in a flowing, continuous sequence. It’s often faster-paced, with repeated small sequences.

I loved it. Do you know why? Because it was “exercise” (I thought at the time) that I could do barefoot...and if you know me, you know being barefoot is my favorite. That was the main reason at first, but I also loved the flow, the movement, and the rest at the end when my mind could finally relax. I practiced regularly for a few years before yoga was replaced by cycling. If I had known then what I know now, I would have tried to do both since they complement each other beautifully.

Then, in 2015, I was in a bike crash. I was hit by a car while riding. Long story short, that accident brought me back to yoga. My recovery and rebuilding strength brought me solidly back to my practice.

Around that same time, I began my body-positivity journey. I started to accept that my body was okay just as it was. I kept practicing yoga, going to different studios until I finally found an instructor I really liked. She encouraged me to explore not just the poses, but also the philosophy behind yoga. Around the same time, I started following plus-size yoga teachers on social media, people like Amber Karnes and Dianne Bondy, who showed me how to make poses work for my body instead of trying to force myself into shapes that didn’t fit.

I started to do those variations of poses in class and my instructor noticed that I was doing things slightly different. She started using me as an example of how you could do a posture more comfortably if you had a larger chest or belly like I did. It made me start to think about becoming a yoga teacher myself.

In 2018, I applied to the Himalayan Institute in Buffalo, NY, and was accepted. I began my 200-hour teacher training that September and finished the following spring. I was the only fat person in the class and I enjoyed sharing the pose variations I’d learned with my fellow students and instructors, and I also discovered so much about the other seven limbs of yoga...learning and realizing that yoga is far from just exercise.

In 2019 I started teaching with the same instructor I had been learning under. I really was grateful to learn from her and the other teachers at the studio that I looked up to. It was at the end of that year that I also got my Accessible Yoga teacher training certification, again from Amber Karnes (who has since become a friend who I get to go on and lead adventures with).

Then came 2020, and the world shut down. Like many yoga instructors, I moved my teaching online, and I loved it. It gave me a low-stress way to grow my teaching while connecting with a wider community. I also got to learn from fat teachers, disabled teachers, and queer teachers I would never have been able to travel to. I learned from South Asian yoga teachers whose culture and traditions brought us yoga, like Susanna Barkataki, whose perspectives expanded my understanding of yoga’s roots.

In 2022, I completed my 300-hour teacher training, Path to Yoga, Justice, and Equity, led by Dianne Bondy. That training deepened my respect for yoga’s roots and its connections to social justice movements. I came to see that the way we teach yoga is social justice in action. I’m so grateful for all the teachers who guided me through that process.
Today, I continue to teach online and I don’t think I’ll ever stop. I love how accessible it is, both for me as a teacher and for my students. I’ve made wonderful friends across the country through online teaching.

I also teach in person and I love that too. I love being in space with people and building community together. My favorite is when I get to be outside and teach to my community…(who here is surprised?)

Yoga has shaped not just how I move, but how I connect. How I connect with myself, my body, and this community. I’m endlessly grateful for the people I’ve met along the way and for every student who shows up just as they are. However you practice, on a mat, in a chair, outside, or in your heart...I hope you know there’s space for you here.

Do you have a yoga practice? 

What does your practice give to you? 

If you don’t, do you want to have one? 
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What is holding you back from trying?

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