With International Yoga Day upcoming on Thursday 21 June, we’re celebrating by shining a light on what yoga really means to all our Flow Athletic Yoga Teachers. Watch our socials next week! And here…An honest insight into KK’s journey to yoga and how, to this day, it’s still her medicine and why doing our Yoga 20/30 Challenge this July could just shift things for you. A lot.
I got into yoga when I wasn’t in a great place mentally.
I’d been down and out for a while and although there seemed to be nothing obviously wrong with anything in my life, I couldn’t shake a bad case of the blues that had been lingering since the later years in high school. I’d gotten to a point where I figured I’d just be ‘coping’ for the rest of my life on anti-depressants. I was told this was just the best solution. And I didn’t know of, had been offered nor found a different strategy or coping mechanism.
It was after a nine month stint living in the UK that actually got me into Yoga. Or should I say it was vanity?
After this time drinking and partying in London as a 22 year old, although fun for the few hours at a time, it was doing nothing for me mentally and certainly didn’t really add any sustainable kind of joy to my life.
My health started to plummet.
Upon returning home and living in Bondi, I decided that Yoga would be a good way to ‘ease me’ back into fitness and health. As a teenager I’d always been a competitive athlete (loving and excelling in hockey, swimming, waterpolo and tennis). In my mind, yoga was ‘easy’ and that one step closer to me being back to ‘active’.
Plus I wanted longer, leaner arms and tight arms and had heard that Vinyasa Yoga would do just that for me.
I’ll never forget that first class in North Bondi at the Dharma Shala (a place where Benny Lucas and I were to meet one day!). I remember the light streaming through the window, the ‘herbal’ kind of guy lying next to me breathing strangely (Ujjayi breath), the way I fumbled around the mat like a baby giraffe, the incense burning and exotic deities on the wall.
It was all very foreign and new. But I had a strange feeling I’d be back.
Upon waking home that evening along the Bondi promenade, I literally stopped in my tracks. For the first time in seven odd years I felt a really raw emotion.
It felt like a part of me was starting to crack open.
I don’t remember labelling it as a ‘particularly’ good feeling or emotion but the fact that I could ‘feel’ was huge. I’d been numb for so long.
Was it the yoga?
I went back. And then back again and again and within that first month a few incredible things happened. My body opened up – really quickly. I became more mobile and agile than ever and after a session my spine would feel longer. I’d walk out taller. Also – and this is the pure gold – mentally I was clearer, gave less to ‘sweating’ the small stuff and after four weeks, came off my meds. And I’ve never looked back.
Yoga and mediation are still my medicine. Daily.
When I look back, and even put it in contrast to some weeks now when I don’t practice as consistently because I think I’m too ‘busy’, it’s the commitment and consistency to my practice that makes the world of difference. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally.
This is partly why we’re holding the Yoga 20/30 Challenge at Flow Athletic this coming June. It’s free entry for all you Flow Athletes and you’ll even be in with the chance to win a stay at Billabong Retreat just out of Sydney (but you’ll feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere).
Feel stronger, lighter and calmer in 30 Days. Guaranteed.