We all have a particular motive that pushes us to try yoga at some point. Sometimes it is the most ordinary excuse and the final leap can depend even more on the insistence of a friend or a couple than on ourselves. But, in short, anyone who approaches the practice of yoga does so to change something, to grow, to learn and to improve; and that’s where the first step to a life-long path takes place.

A student of YogaOne explained us a few days ago how his relationship with yoga began:

I did not start my path in yoga until I had a real reason to do it. About six years ago I went to several open classes for the first time simply “to try”. And I just came out of class sleepy, bored and with a feeling of rejection towards everything that seemed hippy to me.

But two years later yoga came back to me again. At that time, I practiced almost every type of mountain sports: trail running and indoor climbing when I was in Barcelona and more trail, climbing, mountaineering and skiing on weekends. I was in great shape, but my legs and my back were almost always tense and aching. So I told myself that this “yoga thing” would maybe help me to stretch and relieve my battered body a little, while I was continuing my training. It was a tremendously superficial reason, but it was a reason. It was my motive to change something. And it worked.

 

And it did so on a much deeper level than I ever imagined. I started very slowly, attending class only once a week at the DiR. They were practices of hatha yoga, with an excellent teacher who transmitted a state of peace that I did not remember to have ever seen before. It was one of those people who lift your energy, with whom you could spend entire days.

The magic came when, little by little, those Thursday afternoons became a sacred moment for me that I did not want to lose under any circumstances. But beyond the quality of the teacher and the change I began to feel in my battered muscles due to the work of asanas, that little part of the week was revealed as a time dedicated solely and exclusively to be with me, to breathe, to connect with my body, to listen to it, to be each position and feel all its effects and to be present here and now. Excluding absolutely everything else.

This state of yoga was such a new experience for him and it meant a connection so powerful and profound that, day by day, he would begin to take it to many other facets and situations of his daily life. On Thursdays he trained in a state of conscience, he recharged himself, and until the next class he tried to play with that energy to stay present as long as possible.

Over the years, his dedication to practice, his level of study, his motives and his desire to explore have evolved a lot. But yoga has always been at his side. Because yoga reminds you every day that you are immersed in a path of growth that you will never abandon.