🌿 A Body in Motion: Growing Into the Teacher I’m Becoming

As I transition from being a yoga student to stepping into the role of a yoga teacher, I’m realizing just how much learning still lies ahead. Our instructors told us this would happen that once we crossed the threshold into teaching, we’d feel proud and prepared, yet simultaneously aware of how infinite this practice truly is. They encouraged us to remain curious, to explore different branches of yoga, and to trust that the right teachings would find us when we were ready.

And now, standing here at the beginning of this new chapter, I feel exactly that: humbled, inspired, open, and ready to keep learning.

🌸 From Sedentary to Active: My Path Into Movement

For many years, I lived a mostly sedentary lifestyle. I felt stiff, achy, prematurely aged, and disconnected from my own body. That old phrase: “A body in motion stays in motion” became painfully clear once I realized the opposite was also true.

Barre was my first doorway back into movement.
Beautifully paradoxical, barre is gentle and tough, strengthening and softening, intense yet nourishing. It challenged me enough to grow but not enough to injure, and it gave me the foundation I desperately needed.

Yoga arrived soon after, filling in all the empty spaces breath, mobility, alignment, grounding, peace, presence. Yoga connected my mind and body in a way nothing else ever had. It taught me how to listen. To feel. To slow down. To return home to myself.

🥋 How Yoga Led Me Into Muay Thai & Jiu Jitsu

What I didn’t expect was how much yoga would prepare me for other movement disciplines especially martial arts.

After years of barre and yoga, I began training in Muay Thai and later Jiu Jitsu.
Both demand intense mind–body awareness.
Both require calm in chaos.
Both confront your ego immediately and without apology.

In martial arts, there is no hiding.
If you’re not fast enough, it shows.
If you’re not strong enough mentally or physically it shows.
If your ego is running the show, it shows even faster.

I love that about martial arts.
There’s no room for bullshit.
No pretending.
No posturing.
You are what you are in that moment and that truth is liberating.

Yoga is similar in its own quiet way.
We show up on the mat for many reasons healing, strength, mobility, clarity, peace but ultimately, we are left with ourselves. The mat reflects what we bring to it. Every time.

If you show up with presence and honesty, you grow.
If you show up stuck in ego or distraction, you feel it immediately.

Yoga and martial arts are different paths that lead you to the same place:
your truth.

🔥 Continuing the Journey: 300-Hour Training Begins

This weekend, I begin my 300-hour yoga training, a deeper dive, a broader expansion, another layer of learning. This time, I feel mentally grounded and spiritually spacious, ready to absorb, explore, and grow.

I’m also applying for yoga teaching positions and brainstorming ways to bring yoga into my community, whether through classes, mobility workshops, martial arts cross-training, or simply holding space for connection.

The possibilities feel exciting, aligned, and abundant.

🌿 Rethinking Community & How We Show Up

For most of my life, I identified as an extrovert, someone who loves being around people. But as I grow, I’m understanding myself more clearly:

I’m energized by quality, not quantity.
Some people fill my cup.
Some drain it.
Some challenge me in good ways.
Some don’t align with my energy at all.

The quality of a community matters deeply.
And equally important is how I show up within it.

I’m learning to notice when I’m not my best self — when I contract, when I get guarded, when old patterns resurface. Instead of blaming the energy around me, I’m choosing to take responsibility for my own presence. To show up intentionally.

With love.
With gratitude.
With divinity.
With the awareness that every interaction is an exchange.

✨ Practicing Yoga Off the Mat

This is the real yoga — not the poses, not the perfect breath, but the way we respond to the world around us.

Can you send love to someone without saying a word?
Can you offer grace to someone having a hard moment?
Can you remember the times you weren’t your best self — and someone made space for you anyway?

Sometimes the most powerful yoga is choosing to remain soft when the world invites hardness.
Sometimes the highest form of wisdom is choosing silence over being “right.”
Sometimes the greatest grace is the grace we offer ourselves.

When we practice this, our communities grow deeper, fuller, more human, and more healing.

🌞 Final Reflection: Becoming the Teacher & Student I Am

I’m still learning.
I’m still growing.
I’m still becoming.

Yoga has woven together every part of my life — barre, movement, martial arts, motherhood, community, and the daily practice of presence. It’s teaching me to move with intention, to pay attention, to soften my ego, to stay grounded, and to show up with love — no matter the setting.

As I step deeper into teaching and into my 300-hour training, I’m holding this truth close:

The real transformation happens when yoga leaves the mat and enters the rest of our lives.

And I’m ready for all the becoming still ahead.