When I was very young I remember my mother
and my aunt doing what I know now to be a wall stretch, legs up the wall and
some basic toe touching and warrior poses. I thought they were weird. Then my
aunt told me to breathe. I informed her that I already was breathing, or how
else could I possibly be living? “You would do good to learn to do some of this
stretching and one day you might need to learn to breathe in a much more
effective way.” She would tell me. I would poo poo the both of them and seek
out my childhood friends for some wily adventures.
Over the years I had thought a lot about my
aunt and my mother. They were both incredibly beautiful women inside and out
and seemed to defy the aging process. They very rarely if ever complained about
pain in their older years and I found myself wondering about them even more. My
aunt had moved to Minneapolis but came to visit about once a year. I would drag
out my sweats as I knew she was going to make me do some stretches with her. In
her infinite wisdom she did not call it yoga as she probably knew I would think
it was even weirder.
Over the years, as I grew up, my mother and
aunt would constantly be told that they never aged. “What is your secret?”
Others would ask them. I wondered if it was purely genetics or was it their diet. The wonderings I had of my mother and my aunt and how
they seemed to be able to take life in stride soon gave way to my own years of
turmoil and…ahem…lessons that I needed to learn.
Many years later, in my late twenties, I
took a beginner class to get back to the basics of yoga and really learn the
fundamentals. The instructor was very knowledgeable and after seeing and feeling
the results in my body so quickly, I fell completely in love with yoga. And
like a partner in life that you want to get to know more and spend time with
and trust, I wanted to commit to it all the way. Yoga gave me my life back, not
only in the asanas, but in the meditation and breathing techniques. I decided
to go even deeper into the practice knowing full well it would be a life-long
pursuit of ‘knowing’. The saying that you learn by teaching struck me with such
a resounding soul filled echo that I decided I needed to become a yoga
instructor. What better way to learn anything than by teaching it? One thing
life had taught me so far is that those that you think that you will be
teaching more often become some of your own best teachers. The path to becoming
a yoga instructor has been nothing short of an amazing journey into myself and
the incredible life around me that I used to take for granted.
Yoga gives me strength, confidence,
patience, energy, vitality, deeper spiritual insight, a calm I’ve never experienced
before, a centering and balance I never thought was possible and a tolerance
for myself and others that amazes me every single day. That in itself is quite
a feat for a once very high strung perfectionist with OCD tendencies. Yoga
grounds me and centres me and I see it as a metaphor for life and authentic
living. If I am out of alignment in yoga, I can feel it in my body and it
affects my everyday business. I simply centre and get back into alignment and
all becomes well in my universe. If I am out of alignment in life and authentic
living, I can feel the undertow of life tugging and pulling. I simply get back
into alignment and life is normal again, the normal that I have come to know
and love and have been so blessed to call my life.
Hey Aunt Charisma, I am breathing – a
breath unlike anything I’ve ever felt before in my life!
Char Ducharme
Char is current member of the Yoga Centre Winnipeg 200 hour teacher training program
Beautiful! Love it, Char!
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