I remember several years ago in an Iyengar class, when the teacher looked at me and said, “You know you can never stop now, right?” As someone who has had a hard time sticking with anything in life, I looked over my shoulder, from some bound up position, eyebrow raised, curious about what that comment actually meant. I felt at the time that she was putting curse on me? Almost a decade later, here I am, owning a yoga studio, completing my 500 hr training, having spent a week with this summer with inspirational, Shiva Rea, completing my Mentorship with Jnani Chapman in Yoga Therapy, and receiving a new name(Vani). I take a moment to pause, and wonder what comes next!! As I write this I do realized that I am addicted to yoga, hence the name of this blog. My family members are constantly asking me. So now are you done, right? Don’t you know everything there is to know about yoga? I have to reassure them that this is much different than when I was in college, and continually switched my major, because I couldn’t figure out what I was meant to do. I know it seems odd to them, as it did to me a decade ago, when all I knew is that my body felt amazing after being in those different shapes for an hour. Being a forever student, facinated by the art and science of yoga, I realize that even though I have a few more pieces of paper in my yoga notebook, I still feel like I know almost nothing. I know enough to understand what my first teacher meant. It took me thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of training to realize that Barbara was right! I can never stop! Sill, it doesn’t make any more sense to daddy, who thinks Yoga is a Pyramid Program. In some ways that is what it does look like in America.(A topic for a later discussion perhaps) I am forever grateful to have stumbled into that Iyengar class several years ago, and I am grateful that this journey continues. What comes next…I teach. I get endless amounts of joy from being both a student and a teacher of yoga, and dancing between the two. I have seen other teachers struggle with this as they stop practicing when they become teachers. This is not a sustainable practice. It is important to find balance between the two, if you really want to serve your students. Below is a little practice that I do to help me be in the moment whether I am soaking up the tradition from another, or being a channel through which Yoga can flow.

“When I enter the presence of my teachers I ask to be emptied so that I may receive. When I enter the presence of my students I ask that I may be filled so that I can serve.”
-Dani (Vani)