My First Experience with Yoga and How it Changed My Life.

Yoga is always a first experience for me – each day is a new learning –
each breath is an act of filling myself with a little more of life. I learnt yoga
at the tender age of eight accompanying my father, an avid fitness
afficianado, to the local club. Manned by a stalwart of yoga (Mr India Mr
Manotosh Roy), it was indeed an experience that is firmly ingrained in my
memory and consciousness.
I was the baby in the club and I was delighted by the fact that playfully
accompanying my father and trying out some of the cool breathing in and
out exercises he did (however, incorrectly I may have emulated them),
weren’t as hard as doing other things big people do. I was a possibility
waiting to explore newer horizons and yoga let me do just that. It let me
discover a small little world far away from the physical world I knew, where
I could breathe in and out, just close my eyes and see a galaxy of bright
stars flowing into infinity. I had that experience, it was real.
I was still wanting in the stillness or the calmness that is a salient of doing
regular yoga, but the classes held twice a week, were enough to discover
an abyss of a somewhat quieter world in the restlessness of growing up
and trying to understand things. I may or may not have taken a learning
from the events but it had certainly carved a miniscule place in my brain – a
sweet spot that I could call my den.
Fast forward six years and around the age of 14 or soon after I hit puberty,
I was recommended yoga as a means to better my concentration in my
studies. I was going through that precarious age when emotions (love, lust,
hatred, bonhomie, friendship, loathing, anger, disappointment and
excitement) were all mashed up into one burning ball called hormones. I
was game to discover this evocative language that could shut off the world
and help me slow my pacing thoughts. Yoga was not just pranayama for
me at that time as I later came to discover what this evocative language is
called, it brought with it the perks of bending the body just as I tried bending
my thoughts. Suryanamaskara was and still is my everyday energy drink
and my chance to feel at one with the elements of my surroundings.

I grew up during the age of consciousness and Ayurveda was the
ubiquitous kitchen remedy that conveniently tried to elbow the remedies
provided by the corner pharmacy. My home was a tiny reflection of the
revolution all around and yoga was at the pivot. A sarvanasana,
dhanurasana, halasana, matsasana or chakrasana are as much a part of
my psyche as the good food habits I have inculcated over the years.
Yoga saw me at different phases of my life, first when I was a restless and
curious to learn little girl, who was lapping up whatever the universe threw
at me; then as a teenager who was at tenterhooks, trying to stop the motion
of her emotions and now it’s my everyday wake up call. It is first thing, I do
in the morning and the last thing I do when I call it a day.

If I were to sum up yoga in one word I’d say it’s the touchstone that
changes the route of the mind and gives the body a chance to bend and
reach the subtle entities whilst curing everyday ailments. It is my water
when I am thirsty, air when I am out of breadth and sunlight when I am in
need of good cheer. Yoga for me is living.