I’ve been known to have a fiery side of my personality. I’m a deeply passionate, committed person, I don’t take no for answer (or at least I don’t take it well), and I fully believe in the way of the will. Wherever I go, I go with all my heart. No one who has ever met me would describe me as passive. Couple this with a petite frame, and some people walk away from a first meeting with me completely perplexed, or if I’m lucky, intrigued. “How does so much fire live in one small body?” they might ask themselves. “And wait, she practices yoga? How can THAT be?” My answer, as it is so often: my yoga is the reason.
Too often yoga is equated with peace and love and butterflies. It is all of those things, and it’s something more, too. Yoga is about authenticity. Yoga is about feeling everything, even the things that don’t feel so great. As practitioners, and particularly as yoga teachers, we sit with a lot of suffering, anguish, fear, and anxiety. We feel envy, jealousy, anger, disappointment, sadness, loneliness, isolation, fear, and betrayal. All of the ugly emotions of life that we wish there were less of. Yoga doesn’t eradicate those emotions from our lives. If anything, it heightens them. We free them more profoundly than many other people.
And here’s the magic of it all: because we feel those emotions so profoundly, we learn lessons on the deepest of levels and then we can move on. Yoga doesn’t prevent discomfort; it gives us tool to confront discomfort head on and work through it with grace and strength. It helps us to hold our heads high during painful moments and appreciate joy, love, gratitude, and all the beautiful emotions of life all the more. Yoga helps us to carry on.
Christa Avampato 