The Feel Good Factor Instructing Yoga

I would like to take this opportunity to share with you the joy i feel each time i teach a yoga session...

For 13 years i was an aerobics instructor/personal trainer, so this field has always interested me. I worked for the YMCA OF GREATER TORONTO for 8 years, involved in many different positions. Within the fitness industry things changed from year to year. One year they suggest doing a specific exercise, the next year they tell you not to do it because of the injuries that arose through it... it can get very aggravating when you're trying to teach people how to improve their lives, and yet most of these exercises we were taught to pass on resulted in injury, mainly to the knees and lower back areas.... which once injured cause incredible discomfort and have serious effect on one's health.

Yoga is a 5000 year old healing art and the basis of it has never changed. A client is taught to listen to their own bodies, given poses that internally massage the internal organs and drain them of any built up toxins and emotions. When i encountered other instructors who had been teaching Yoga for years, the quality of their skin was always so youthful looking, as was their outlook on life. This is what attracted me initially to Yoga.

Once i began taking my own practice seriously i started noticing the changes in my attitude, changes in my attitude towards others, my body always felt lengthened after a class and my mind at ease, i was hooked!!

I then decided to start instructing Yoga and passing on this amazing tool that teaches you how to heal yourself through a pose rather than popping a pill, turning to alcohol, which i myself did for years, or other drugs. Many of the poses in Yoga help one through addictions, are disease fighters, cancer included. There are poses that will clear a sore throat, cure a cough, bring ease to a migraine or headache, drain your liver, cleanse the lungs and kidneys, message the glands in the head and calm the nervous system, poses to help cure insomnia and i can go on and on...it's mind blowing to learn that we have everything we need from head to toe and that we still look for outside sources for a quick fix. We've been given these amazing human bodies, which is the most complicated piece of machinery around, and yet we seem to take better care of our cars and homes then we do of our own being. Funny thing is that it's your health that will carry you happily through life if you treat it right, all your possessions get left behind...HEALTH IS WEALTH...

In every yoga session I teach I pass on this valuable information that is so precious. The clients feel this and the unity felt in the room is breathtaking!! Every client is breathing deep, every movement having a breath. All you hear throughout the class is the sounds of breath, and as an instructor you learn who is holding back, who is letting go...you learn to body read people and help them target problem areas in their bodies which in result relaxes the mind and brings them to self awareness. It gives me such great pleasure to be able to introduce people to this world for it's practical uses more than spiritual. The spiritual comes automatically to those open to it but i do not preach this, it's very individual .. i do preach about how to help yourself through any emotions or physical ailments, only because it has worked wonders for me....

We are all so spoiled in this life, yet seem so unappreciative of it. There is soo much poverty and real suffering in the world, and yet we allow our little mundane problems to become so large and egotistical...always wanting more...when we already have too much. Throughout my travels i always found that the poorest people were always so much more in tune with themselves and content with just that. They are the happiest people i have encountered, rarely complaining of anything, serene in their facial expressions, just enjoying what they've been given, which is so little to the Western eye, yet so much more to them.

Yoga has taught me to appreciate what i have in my life, not what i don't have. To focus on the positive not the negative. To not just speak words, but to take action on them... Yoga has given me soooo much courage to do the things I've always wanted to do, it taught me to move through my fears, and through that my courage has grown more so. At the end of every session that i teach i don't want it to come to an end, and this passes onto my clients. It truly brings joy to my life and this is what i wanted to share with you.... I am far from being a true angel and i still battle with many things, but everyday and in every way i feel like i am getting better and better. I will always be better than before, and so can you... BELIEVE!

"If you begin to understand what you are without trying to change it, then what you are undergoes a transformation" J.Krishnamurti