I have been practicing yoga since I was 12 years old. Not because I was so evolved, but just because I was born and raised in India and my mum signed me up for one and I was hooked. I am both hyperflexible in some joints and hypoflexible in others and yoga keeps me from injuring myself. Moving to the United States alone at the age of 21, yoga was the one constant in my life. Not because I practiced regularly; but that I knew I could.
Yoga has always been more than a workout for me. It is about the sound of the teacher’s voice, it’s about the cadence they set, the flow of the poses and even if they use the Sanskrit asana names or not. Hot, sweaty, power, iron, yoga has never appealed to me. Yoga for me is truly the unification of my mind, my body, my spirit and my soul and it is on the mat that I can truly align all and go deep.
I have always wanted to learn to teach yoga. Not because I envision that I will want to teach it in a gym or even perhaps in a studio. Just because I believe the principles that yoga teaches are principles I aspire to live my life by, and principles I like to share with audiences (and in particular young audiences).
Yoga gives me a vocabulary for my words and a scaffolding for my thoughts.
Who taught me yoga teacher training then, was going to be just as important as the teacher who teaches me yoga.
As always, the Divine brings together circumstances and situations to put the right people in our paths, and it is through one such connection that I was introduced to my yoga teacher trainer Kristin Gibowicz of Living Soul Institute.
This blog is dedicated to this new journey that I am embarking on.
One that finally has me embracing my given name at birth and enmeshing it with the practice of my homeland that is as old as the hills around me.
Gitanjali is a collection of poems written by Rabindranath Tagore for which he won a Nobel Prize in Literature. Its central theme is devotion, and its motto is ‘I am here to sing thee songs.’
It is also the name my parents gave me at birth.
This then I think will be the story of my rebirth where I finally feel worthy to call this name mine.
Gitanjali 