The Year It Took Me To Start Yoga

By July 2018 I had had it with Greece. Since 2015 I had stopped feeling Greek and increasingly felt imprisoned there. My solution was to try practically everything I could find under the sun until something opened a way out.

Yoga was one of those experiments. I was in Athens and went to three sessions at Evergreen Yoga Studios. Panos's practice and the atmosphere of the place made an impression before I had any idea what I was looking at.

About twenty minutes into the first session my body was screaming. I was destroyed, and slightly stunned by how quickly the class had exposed the condition I was in.

Something clicked anyway. Perhaps it was the space, perhaps Panos, perhaps simply discovering that my health needed immediate attention. I decided yoga would become part of my life.

Then I did absolutely nothing about it for a year.

In August 2019 I finally designed a schedule and began on my own. Half an hour into it I felt the familiar wave of dizziness I used to get as a child while standing in church. I sat down, then lay with my legs against the wall. There is a stretch of time I cannot account for; I either fell asleep or briefly fainted.

That was useful information. My body was not negotiating. I needed patience, consistency and considerably less confidence in schedules designed by a beginner.

The goal survived the embarrassment. I returned. That was the real beginning.