Sustainable Weight Loss Through Yoga by Kaushik Dash

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

How Yoga Helped Me Conquer Asthma by Rachel Rajput

When I was a kid I had asthma. The doctor claimed my triggers for wheezing were cats, dust and cigarette smoke, and in the 80s it seemed like those things were always around.

I remember being in PE class and not being able to breathe when we were running. I was told that I should sit down and rest while all the other kids would run and play.

I didn’t have an extreme case of asthma, but l felt excluded.

I remember the fear that I would have an asthma attack... and the feeling that I couldn't get enough breath in. The sound and feel of wheezing. Breathing through my mouth.

Fast forward to today. I stopped carrying a rescue inhaler years ago.

I still have a moderate cat allergy, but the others are gone.

I attribute the practice of yoga to expanding my lung capacity.

For many years, as an asthmatic, I was told to slow down and breathe deeply, but I was never able to. In addition to the physical response my body was having, I would go into a sympathetic nervous system state of panic and could not get any air in. The only breath I could get in was shallow, in the top of my chest. Panting.

I’ve been practicing yoga now for around 20 years, diverse types and styles. When I started practicing heated power yoga a few times a week, around 2004, was when I noticed a major difference in my lung capacity.

I stopped worrying that I forgot to put my inhaler in my purse... because it was less and less often that I needed it. I could ride my bike longer without getting winded. I even stopped having to take a pre-exercise puff on the inhaler.

I’m not sure exactly when I stopped using my inhaler, but the more yoga I did, the less I used it.

I share this story because so many of us have a "thing" that we think is weird, scary, or shameful. My 'thing" was being the kid who wheezed.

Yoga taught me to breathe deeply.

Has it taught you something too?