​Why Does Someone Start Yoga?

​I sat down and thought about how I actually started practicing yoga.  My standard answer has always been that I hurt my hip hiking and it progressively felt worse.  I had heard yoga was good for joints so I tried it and I liked it.  Pretty simple, right?

Well, it actually wasn’t quite like that...sit right back and you’ll hear a tell...a tell of a fateful trip! 

The journey actually started when I was a little munchkin.  I didn’t grow up in a commune but I might as well had.  I was surrounded by a huge mishmash of fabulous hippies that all seemed (in my mind as a small kid) to descend upon my grandparents’  property on a regular basis. My “extended” family was made up of neighbors, family friends, family members, various farm animals and other pets. I grew up hating shoes (and at some points in my life clothes as well), riding horses, listening to my uncles play covers of the Eagles and CCR, living in Cheech and Chong’s Up In Smoke occasionally and wondering who that strange looking man was on the cover of my mom’s meditation book.   The book was right beside the psychedelic candle shaped like a turtle (which I still has to this very day-he’s cute!) on the living room bookshelf.

Combine this eclectic upbringing with picking my uncle (from Florida) up at a 1970's airport and my growing fascination with the Hare Krishnas (they have to be nice people; they sell flowers and wear pretty robes!), I was bound to come full circle.

So time went on...now I’m in college.  I was dabbling with vegetarianism and was walking around the National Mall in Washington, DC with a friend.  And guess who approached me to buy a vegetarian cookbook???...Hare Krishnas, that’s who!!!  Even though they did not have the cool clothes and hair of yore, they were totally awesome and super nice to talk to...just like I told my mom they would be when I was little!  With cookbook in hand...I set off to learn more. So I took a bunch of Hindu and Buddhist religion classes while at college.

Then I got married and lost my way.  So I got divorced and found my way again! (Ultimately, I did found my soul mate-actually I knew him for years.  I just wore him down until he relented and married me.)

So that brings me back to trying yoga to help my hip.  I realize now the the hip issue was fixed by my practicing one limb of yoga--asanas.  I had already been practicing the other limbs of yoga by creating good karma, trying to eat and live in the least harmful way, “just breathing in deep; it will all pass in time” and singing the Guru Mantra along with George Harrison.

But I have a feeling that explaining all this with hands flying around, a goofy smile and far off look in my eye will not fly...

​So let’s just say I started yoga because I hurt my hip.  

Remember everybody has a different journey.  The how and why you do yoga is unique to you. How did you start your journey?  Comment below!