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This week we have Amelie taking the Ripple blogpost stage, sharing with us her personal story with the practice of yoga. Enjoy.
Let me introduce myself: I was born in 1979 in Normandy. I was raised in a family of five (I am the eldest), and as foster parents, my parents had at heart to teach us strong values of sharing and being compassionate. I embraced a career in communication in the publishing industry after studying English for a while. This did not feel like a calling, but hey: we cannot all live from our passion, and mine was not quite there yet.
That’s when Yoga made its entrance into my life. Fifteen years ago, feeling stressed out, and spending way too much time sitting on a chair, I decided to push open the doors of a SwáSthya Yôga studio, which happened to be near my office. This Yoga method claiming to be a reconstitution of an antique yoga, dating from 5000 years ago, mixed mudras, mantras, kriyas, asanas and a strong pranayama and meditation practice. The postural part got my attention, but as far as the rest was concerned, I did not quite get it yet. At some point, I even quit practicing, but the seeds had been planted, keen to grow into something.
Thanks to a really strange and intense hypnosis session, I decided to go back to Yoga. Let’s say that a weird and pushing force had driven me out of my Cartesian certitudes, and since I had alreay practiced Yoga in the past, I felt like the practice could provide some answers, or at least bring me along the path to understanding the principles of life differently. Needless to say: I never quit practicing ever since!
When getting back to the mat, I started trying different modalities: Vinyasa, Ashtanga Vinyasa, Hatha Yoga, Iyengar, Yoga Nidra, a little Kundalini, and at some point, Yin Yoga. Thanks to this specific practice, in which body and mind simmer in the poses, I felt a shift. The practice, really slow, really deep because of the long hold of the postures, helped me really focus. It brought both my mind and energy back on the same track.
Encountering this practice, and realizing how out of balance I was, throwing way too much energy out there, exhausting myself to the point of getting sick, it was a life changer… That’s probably when and why I decided to become a Yoga teacher. To be able to provide others with all the wisdom this ever-changing and adapting practice can offer! Darwin said that only the fittest may thrive and survive, and Yoga, ever since its creation, kept adapting to the evolutions of societies, to the cultures that adopt it.
As for myself, along with getting certified in Vinyasa Yoga (thanks to great teachers such as Gérard Arnaud -who was taught by Sadh Sivalingam- Mathieu Boldron or Jason Crandell) I have been studying Yin Yoga with the amazing Bernie Clark and other teachers among which Sebastian Pucelle and Murielle Burelier (former students and assistants of Paul Grilley). The more I practice, the deeper I get into my meditations and the more I am in the simplest sense. I let my energy (you may call it Prana, Qi, life force…) show me the path. Understanding that I should follow the rhythm of things and nature, I try to sense when is the proper time to react, or how to adapt.
It is not always easy, but when the time is correct, if everything is ready, change can occur naturally. If you have to fight for something, sometimes it might simply be because that thing is not for you, or the timing is not correct. Accept that something different might be ahead for you.
Practice with care, pay attention to what you do and how you do it, FEEL it, and that might be enough. Maybe you don’t have to do it every single Asana to be in harmony with your body, nature and with your inner truth. We tend to forget that we all have our own voice to bring to the world, to the symphony of life. Nature is filled with variations, singularities, and differences. That’s part of what makes life so fun and interesting and worth experiencing. I guess that’s what I try to teach my students: yoga is just here to help you mingle with the rhythm of life, with your own rhythm. And that might simply be how you may reveal your own potential!
