I did my first yoga class when I was about 18 years old in my "children's room" at the time, with a yoga class recorded on CD. I had the CD from one of my fitness magazines and when I popped it into my laptop (yes, there were still CD players in laptops back then!) the Power Yoga Flow started. I liked it and from then on I tried out various YouTube yoga videos sporadically. I quickly realized that although I enjoyed the videos, the yoga poses didn't always feel properly aligned and so I wanted to delve deeper into the anatomy of yoga. I then attended yoga classes in yoga studios and decided relatively quickly to do a yoga teacher training course with the ulterior motive of expanding my own practice. Teaching yoga myself was absolutely not an option at the time I started my training.
With relatively little yoga experience, I "stumbled" into my first 200-hour yoga training course in 2019, curious and not knowing what would change for me. I opted for a training course in my hometown of Mainz, which took place at weekends. This meant that I could complete the training during my studies and my job.
The training itself was challenging in many ways. It was physically challenging because I was an absolute beginner at the time and many of the other participants already had years of intensive yoga experience. But above all, it was emotionally challenging because I was going through the worst heartbreak (hopefully of my life, we will see) and often didn't know where my head and heart were. Diving deeper into the physical, but more importantly mental and spiritual structures of yoga while my heart was full of heartbreak, has kind of broken me open inside. In a good way, I can see with hindsight. Back then, it was often upsetting in the first place. So it's not a "happy teacher training sunshine story" at this point. I have never cried as much in my life as I did during this training. My instructor said to us at the time "if you've never cried during/after yoga, you haven't really experienced yoga". And I think there is some truth in that, because if we are ready to be touched by yoga on all levels, including deeper levels, then it sets something in motion, then something changes. Then it touches us deeply in our emotions and our being. Then yoga can bring us healing.
So I went through the teacher training, inquisitive and curious, soaking up all the information like a sponge, becoming more and more enthusiastic about the many facets of this long-established tradition and philosophy. My first attempts at teaching as part of the training were so bumpy and unsuccessful that I was happy to go through the teacher training just for my own practice. But as time went on, I became more confident and it was gradually more fun to pass on the passion I had so quickly developed for yoga by teaching in our training group. Our teacher strongly motivated us to start teaching, to have the confidence to do so, and gave me the feedback that I should go out and teach yoga. And so it soon happened that I taught my first open yoga classes as a substitute during the training and was quickly offered my own permanent class in the yoga studio. I have always enjoyed teaching, having studied adult education and taught tutorial classes at university, but until then I would never have thought that I would become a yoga teacher and that it would give me so much joy and fulfillment.
This sparked my love of yoga, my heartache slowly got better and I quickly realized that this was just the beginning of a long (yoga) journey.
