How Yoga Changed My Life

Unless your parents managed to keep a very watchful eye on you as a teenager, we ALL did something stupid. At least one thing.

I was generally a good kid. I got good grades. I was only mildly rebellious. I was that kid that everyone thought was super smart, but was actually just antisocial.

To keep a long story short and spare you the (illegal) details: My junior year, I fell in with the wrong crowd, partook in activities I knew were wrong, had a very traumatizing experience and, as a result, developed severe anxiety. And I’m talking severe.

I couldn’t drive by myself, go into public by myself or even be at home by myself. I never knew when something would trigger a panic attack and it terrified me not to have someone around to tell me I wasn’t going to die.

At this point, it was impossible to hide my issues from my parents, so I confessed what I had done and they got me help in the form of cognitive therapy.

Though the introvert in me was horrified at the idea of spilling my guts to a complete stranger, after time this ended up doing wonders for me mentally. I began to feel more in control of my thoughts and my panic attacks reduced in frequency.

But they didn’t go away. There were still times when no one else was around and my mind would start whirling with no way to stop it and my blood would sudden feel too hot in my body and I couldn’t stop shaking and I couldn’t breathe. And I knew I would die. Even though I wasn’t in any danger.

Totally unrelated to my personal problems that I was trying so hard to hide from my (very small) group of friends, it was at this time that a girlfriend invited me to join her for a hot yoga class.

Perhaps ignorance made me agree to go. Who, in their right mind, would try a workout class that they knew nearly nothing about, in a room that was an upwards of 100 degrees, surrounded by hot, sweaty people? I went.

The thing I remember most is sitting back to child’s pose, as everyone around me continued the sequence, and looking at my hands. I was panting and I could feel my heart beating in my cheeks. But that didn’t bother me. It was my hands, my sweaty palms. That was the trigger. The feeling was so familiar. They felt exactly this way during a panic attack. I just remember looking at them and thinking “I can’t leave in the middle of class. I can’t panic. There is no one that can help me here.” I felt helpless, and I think that was the key. I knew none of these yoga students, or even my friend, could help me in this moment. My only option was to help myself.

I sat there in child’s pose. My eyes closed, feeling sweat drip down my nose and chin, and I pressed my sweaty palms into the mat. I thought about the teacher’s instruction at the beginning of class: breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth. I kept this cycle through the remainder of the class. When I walked out of that studio, no one would have ever known I had a weak moment.

This was not magic. It’s not like suddenly all my anxiety was gone. But I felt empowered. Here was this practice that made me feel so strong, mentally and physically. Here was the tool that I needed. Breathing and focus were so powerful.