My yoga journey

My yoga journey started in 2009. Both my husband and my step mom had been practicing and teaching for many years and had been encouraging me to experience it. I can’t even remember why I was resistant to trying it but suffice it to say, I have never been sporty, and usually shy away from anything too physical, just in case I make a fool of myself.

They eventually coaxed me into trying it by doing a few private introductory lessons with me. When I realised that yoga wasn’t something to be feared anymore, I signed up for lessons at the Ananda Kutir Ashram. This is where my love of yoga was ignited. I practiced there for about 2 years before we moved away from the area. It is such a haven and I urge anyone in that area to try it.

My step mom and dear friend, Kathy Schwager, teaches from her studio in Claremont where I started to attend her group classes and do private classes with her. She is Sivananda trained but has done numerous courses in the Satyananda lineage, both styles with which I strongly resonate. After attending various of Swami Pragyamurti‘s classes on her trips to Cape Town, I applied to attend her beginners yoga teacher training course in 2012. Later in 2013, I attended the first three modules of the Integral Yoga training with Swami Vidyananda which opened me to yoga philosophy and a deeper understanding of the spiritual journey of yoga. By now the seeds had been deeply sown and I knew that this was a path I was meant to walk.

In 2012 I started teaching classes at the Crescent Clinic and at Valkenberg hospital, under the guidance and tutelage of Kathy Schwager. The classes are the most basic yoga, mainly consisting of light stretching and breathing. I love teaching these classes and feel like I get as much, if not more out of holding this space for my students as they might from participating.

At the beginning of 2014, I decided to take the next step and become a formally certified yoga teacher. I enrolled with Ananda Sanga Educational Institute to attend their 200 hour yoga teachers training course. In February we completed the practical training part of the course and I am now half way through completing the theory part of the course. What an amazing and life changing experience it has been.

I love practicing and teaching yoga. But by immersing myself in the history, theory, philosophy of it; surrounded by the most beautiful people, each on their own path of truth seeking, was more than I could have hoped to have gotten out of the course. I know now that I will never stop being a student and can only hope to be as blessed in the future as I have been in the past. The practice of yoga is our journey towards unity with the divine and what a gorgeous trip it has been so far.