Hello, I am Victoria.
I’ve always had a fascination with yoga, but never believed it could be accessible for someone like me. My body had acclimated to its stiffened and non toe-touching lifestyle. Little did I know, there was a wizened Indian man a half world away telling people that “the body is not stiff, the mind is stiff.”
I started playing with yoga in my early 20’s, taking classes a couple times per week and begrudgingly coming to accept that my toes would always be just out of reach, I would always need a wall to help balance on my head and the back bend would forever be an unattainable mystery. But I still loved it…
I was having fun in my led yoga classes, but I had an unexplainable aversion ashtanga and my Mentor at the time asked me why I didn’t want to try it. I remember answering, “I like not knowing what’s coming next in the vinyasa classes.” therefore, cleverly (or so I thought) temporarily alleviating myself of the responsibility of taking care of myself during my own healing journey.
My Mentor then convinced me to partake in the teacher training she and her partner were hosting and wouldn’t you know, she tricked me into practicing Ashtanga every day for that month long intensive. She tricked me into falling in love with a method I had no previous understanding of and wanting more. She was a great teacher. So great, that she then handed me off to the resident Mysore Instructor who had just moved to Hawaii with his family. I thought after that entire month of practicing and just living in the school of yoga every day, 8 hours per day, I knew enough to know everything I needed to know… I was proven wrong again and again and now my previous argument for preferring the unknown of the vinyasa led classes had turned itself upside down as did my own ability to balance on my own without a wall.
Well, here’s to learning. After a year of daily practice, I worked through some issues and got closer to my toes. We’ve been inseparable since (in case you wondered). Then my travels to India catapulted my body, mind and spirit on a world wide journey that seemed a whirlwind at the time and definitely in hindsight. While my life was deciding itself out (I kept trying to put my two cents in, but I was definitely caught up in the current of organized chaos) my constant was Ashtanga. I could go anywhere, witness anything, and do all the things required in a life and I still had my body and soul breaking/healing practice to keep me grounded and sane and able to relate to myself and to my fellow man a little more cohesively.
So here I am offering all that I am to this practice that has taken, reshaped and given me so so much. I love sharing this method to those who want to learn it because Ashtanga, above everything else, is a tool. A perfect and personally etched measure of your own daily victorious and not so victorious moments.