What Led Me to Om
I found yoga in my twenties, at a time when I wasn’t looking for anything particularly profound. I wasn’t searching for spirituality, a new identity, or a teaching path. Yoga entered my life first as a physical practice — movement, strength, sweat, challenge. It was something I did because it felt good in my body and gave me a way to move with intention. At that point, yoga was asana, and I didn’t feel the need to define it as anything more than that.
When I began teaching in my early thirties, it happened organically rather than as part of a carefully mapped plan. I was never required by my employer to complete a formal 200-hour certification, and while I had always wanted to do one, the reality of time and cost made it feel out of reach. Teacher trainings were expensive, time-consuming, and often structured in ways that didn’t fit my life at the time. So I taught. I learned by doing. I paid attention. I watched people move, struggle, adapt, and change.
That period of teaching shaped me deeply. Being in rooms with real bodies — bodies in pain, bodies dealing with injury, mental health challenges, exhaustion, stress, aging — taught me things no manual could. I learned how different nervous systems respond to the same cues. I learned that strength and safety don’t look the same for everyone. I watched yoga support people who were hurting physically, people who were struggling mentally, and people who simply wanted to challenge themselves in a way that felt empowering rather than punishing. Even without formal philosophical study at that point, it was clear that yoga was doing something meaningful.
Eventually, burnout forced a pause I hadn’t allowed myself before. When I began my own healing process, the circumstances that had once made a 200-hour training feel impossible finally shifted. I had the time. I had the financial ability. And perhaps most importantly, I had the curiosity. This time, I wasn’t pursuing training to validate myself as a teacher — I wanted to understand yoga beyond the physical shapes I already knew so well.
That experience was transformative in ways I didn’t expect. Yoga philosophy drew me in immediately. I realized how limited my understanding of yoga had been when it existed only as asana. The ethical framework, the historical context, the exploration of suffering, attachment, awareness, and discernment — all of it added depth and dimension to a practice I already loved. Yoga stopped being confined to the mat and became a broader lens for understanding behavior, burnout, effort, rest, and resilience.
It was during my 200-hour training that the idea for Om What a Wonderful World first took shape. Not as a polished business plan, but as a feeling and a direction. The training helped me articulate something I had already been sensing: that yoga could be expansive without being dogmatic, grounded without being rigid, and accessible without being watered down. I wanted a framework that allowed movement, philosophy, and real life to coexist — a space where people didn’t have to be perfect, enlightened, or “fixed” to belong.
That thread has continued to evolve as I’ve moved through my 300-hour training, which I’m in the process of wrapping up in the next couple of weeks. This phase of study has felt less like an introduction and more like refinement — sharpening how I sequence, how I cue, how I think about nervous system regulation, sustainability, and long-term practice. It’s reinforced my belief that good teaching doesn’t come from collecting credentials, but from staying curious, humble, and engaged. Finishing my 300-hour feels less like an endpoint and more like a continuation of the same inquiry that’s guided me all along: how to offer yoga in a way that genuinely serves people.
Through all of this, I’ve continued to witness yoga do remarkable things — not in flashy, before-and-after ways, but quietly and consistently. I’ve seen people move with less pain, breathe more freely, and gain confidence in their bodies. I’ve seen yoga support mental health not as a replacement for care, but as a complementary tool that helps people feel more regulated and present. I’ve also seen it challenge people physically in ways that are intelligent and empowering rather than extractive.
In this current chapter of my practice, I’m intentionally returning to something both physical and symbolic: inversions. This is the year I’ve committed to owning them through weekly practice across the entire year. Not rushing. Not forcing. Just showing up consistently and letting strength, confidence, and nervous system trust build over time. Inversions have always represented more than being upside down to me — they ask for patience, consistency, and a willingness to stay with discomfort without immediately backing away.
Rather than treating inversions as party tricks or peak poses to conquer, I’m approaching them as a long game. Week by week, I’m working on fundamentals, refining technique, and staying present with the process instead of fixating on the outcome. The hope is that over the course of the year, something shifts. If it culminates in a new level of prowess, great. If it culminates in deeper steadiness, trust, and understanding, that matters just as much.
My yoga journey has never been about perfection, mastery, or tidy transformation narratives. It’s been about evolution — learning more, seeing more clearly, and allowing the practice to change as I do. Yoga didn’t fix me, and it didn’t save me. What it has done — and continues to do — is offer a flexible, adaptable framework that supports real humans living real lives.
That’s the version of yoga I believe in and teach: one that honors the physical practice, respects the philosophical roots, and acknowledges that strength, healing, and growth are rarely linear. Yoga is not one thing, and neither is the journey into it. Mine is still unfolding — shaped by experience, study, curiosity, and the people who step onto the mat alongside me.
