graduate #yogastory – Lynda K.
My name is Lynda. I am a 34-year old French woman from Paris. The plan has always been to heal myself with Yoga. I have a disease called endometriosis and started practicing Bikram yoga almost 2 years ago because I knew yoga would help me to feel better in my body and make the pain go away. This is how my yoga journey started.
I have worked in the corporate world, in a very stressful environment, for many years. But I always knew it was temporary. A few months ago, it just hit me. It was time for a life change. I wanted to become a yoga teacher and open a studio! I decided to quit my job and enroll in the teacher training in Paris with evolation and aim for a nice and stress-free life, full of meditation, yoga asanas, and organic juices!
I knew that teacher training would be intense, like nothing I had done before, but it still took me by surprise. I found it very tough to wake up at 6.30 every morning and not hit the pillow around 11.30 at night. We usually had 2 classes a day, but that turned out to be the easy part of the training.
I found it very challenging to memorize the dialogue in a very short period of time and practice teaching in front of others. I am not a shy person, but I'm also discrete and don't like to have all the attention. Not being a native English speaker made it especially intimidating and took me out of my comfort zone! I cried almost every day, asking myself if I would ever be able to teach a full class, to be a yoga teacher, a good one, like the ones I love in my studio. At first, my teaching was not great. But I was very proud of myself for overcoming my own fears and following through with it. Now I know that with more practice I can improve and evolve into a strong teacher.
The experience was definitely one-of-a-kind – spending my days with people I didn't know before and without my personal or quiet time. The whole training was tough, overwhelming but equally exciting. I am so glad I did it! I learned a lot about myself and yoga, and I realized that I was capable of doing much more than I thought. All the teachers were fantastic with incredible skills. I have improved my practice and learned more about my body and myself than I could have imagined.