my yoga story: part two.

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Find part one of my yoga story here.

One thing that is important to know about me is that I am by no means a religious person. At one point in my life I was, but during college I came to appreciate and respect all religions, and I just couldn’t see picking one over the others.

But sometime in 2008 I began to practice yoga. It immediately began to fulfill both a physical and emotional need in my life. I came to class; practiced; listened for wise words about life, yoga, or just breathing, from my teachers; and soaked it all in. 

It was an amazing feeling.

Just over one year ago, I moved back to Ohio from Syracuse, New York. And shortly after that something happened and I was forced to question all that I had been taught in yoga.

I have yet to talk about this incident on my blog because it’s been difficult to come to terms with in real life. But it’s time.

One year ago, I was offered what I thought would be my dream job: to manage a yoga studio in Ohio. I had worked in another studio previously and jumped at the opportunity. 

I moved back to Ohio on a Saturday, and began working on Monday for one of my teachers.

You think you know your teachers because you take their classes. I had to come to the realization, that you don’t. And they aren’t always who you think they are.

And that was incredibly difficult to come to terms with.

Needless to say, I was there for a week. Struggling to make my yoga teacher/new boss happy by doing anything and everything she asked; but it was never good enough. I felt like a major screw up {she has this way of making people feel that way}. 

I worked long, intense hours {think 16 hour days for my first 5 days} and everything I did was put under a microscope. I could do nothing right; there was no learning curve of how she did things.

After my first week home, my sister graduated college. I spent the weekend barely able to eat, not at all able to sleep, and crying non-stop.

Not only was the job I was so excited for not working out, but I felt like a major screw up and was starting to believe all of the things that this woman was saying to me {and trust me, they were some really awful things}. 

I was actually relieved on Monday when I came into work and she told me she didn’t want me to come in anymore. I hadn’t had the balls to actually quit myself. But it didn’t end there.

She gave me a verbal lashing for an hour. Telling me how worthless I was; that I was a liar; that I was an idiot.

I shed no tears in front of her. I said nothing in response. I had already come to the conclusion that you cannot try and tell a crazy person that they are crazy. She would’ve just tried to use it against me.

I walked out. She told me that I wasn’t allowed to come back and practice at her studio {which was fine by me because I wanted nothing to do with her, but really? turn away what could be a paying customer??}. 

And then I had to deal with the consequences of how this shook my yoga practice to its core. And it’s something that I have been dealing with ever since.