My journey into yoga is really the birth of the person I am today, before this practice I had no other direction, purpose, or form of joy that wasn’t destructive.
I was extremely overweight. At my heaviest, I was past 400 pounds; but the weight was just a physical manifestation of what was going on in my brain: stuck energy everywhere and zero body awareness. I was severely unhappy and saw no reason to keep existing. Something had to change.
Eventually, I started getting heart complications: arrhythmias; I would wake up in a sweat in the middle of the night, for no reason. Eventually, my heart rate will spike to upwards of 180 bpm. I knew in that moment… I did not want to die. I had a lot of work ahead.
First. I decided to fix my relationship with food. I started incorporating a healthy diet into my daily routine. I started to exercise daily and make myself a priority.
Fast forward to a few years later, 2018 to be specific. I was somewhere around 300 lbs, a lot of progress but a lot of work was still needed. The more I did; the more I found what I needed to work on.
I discovered that exercise and movement were joyful. One day, I was walking around at a street festival, and I happened upon a booth for a yoga studio. They gave me a free class card. I tossed it in my wallet and forgot about it. A few weeks later, happened to be cleaning out my wallet, and found the free class card.
I decided that was the day. I called the studio and booked a 90 min hot yoga class. I struggled the whole time… but the teacher was so nice, inviting, and helpful. Something clicked. I loved everything about the class: the heat, the postures, the intensity, the body awareness. All I had wanted was to lose some weight, but instead I came into a state of awareness: I needed to change everything about my life.
I signed up for the first month, eventually working at the studio in return for free classes and community. I kept my ears open, listening to everyone, learning from the ground up, outside and inside classrooms, I immersed myself in the practice.
I loved the freedom in my body, mind and heart. I let go of toxic relationships and friendships. I shed weight and became stronger. I started to take classes everywhere I could. Eventually I found myself in Hayward at a studio called Hot Box Yoga. I loved the community of teachers & students. I signed up for YTT : 200 Hrs and began the deep dive from student to teacher, things were looking up. I graduated 3/1/20; just days before the shutdown.
I was so hyped to teach! I wanted nothing more than to guide a room full of people, with a hot playlist and give others the same joy and freedom that I found on my mat. But, much to my dismay, we lost each other. Hot Box Yoga eventually had to shut down, and I lost my community… never having gotten to hold them or even to say goodbye.
This was a dark time, for humanity collectively, but I had this gift and the desire to share. I decided to post a schedule on my Insta story and offer online classes. Eventually I started doing online and outdoor classes. Teaching without props and without walls tested me to create containers whilst in the open air: a skill that is useful even today, for my outdoor classes.
This was also the time a lot of yoga teachers felt called to shelter and to go inwards, but I felt like I had been in training for just this moment, I took every opportunity to teach: online, outdoors in the cold, outdoors in the heat, it didn’t matter.
More than ever before, it felt like people needed yoga, and I needed practice. It felt like a perfect exchange, but I hadn’t found a community yet like the one at Hot Box.
That is, until I found myself at Left Coast.
I’m new here, but it feels familiar.
I still love teaching my students, who teach me while I guide them.
I leave you with a prayer by Yaslin Bey (Mos Def)
They - the one who has created the all
You know us better than we know ourselves
And we know ourselves better than others know or pretend to know us
So, pardon us for our shortcomings; known or unknown
Make us better than what they say and do not make us responsible for whatever they say
Amen, amen, amen
Kaushik Dash