The meaning of Alamba Yoga & My Yoga Journey So Far

Good morning,

I am writing this while my Husband and my Baby have a Sunday morning nap (VERY PRECIOUS TIME, WHICH CAN END ANY MINUTEJ). I have just had a shower, and placed a cup of herbal tea is on my desk, which is full of children’s books with songs in French.  I let my housework fade into the background, to allow a little bit of time to write my morning thoughts. There is something very relieving about putting on the paper your random thoughts (try it one day and see!).

I have decided to start this blog for a set of reasons:

1.       To share my passion for yoga, which I personally love so much.

2.       To share some tips or facts about yoga, that will help my students and everybody who loves yoga to learn a little bit more about it and to be able to incorporate this into their very busy lives.

3.       To inspire my lovely students to keep going with yoga practise, as I truly believe that yoga helps to cope better with anything that life presents to us.

4.       To be able to learn every day something new, and develop further my own yoga practise.

5.       I love the whole idea of creating a blog, I think it is fantastic!!!

Why did I call my blog as well we my classes “Alamba Yoga”?

Alamba from Sanskrit means “Support”.  And this is what yoga to me is. My journey with yoga started when I found an old book on my book shelf, which used to be my Father’s book from the time when he was very young. My father was working in the military, and perhaps took some interest for the yoga practise, to be able to maintain physical strength. Actually, I don’t even know why he had that book.

So I read this book, tried some asanas and loved it. I then desperately wanted to find some yoga classes to develop my practise. Back at that time I lived in Tyumen, it is a place in Russia, Siberia. There is 6 month winter time per year in my city, and most of the time it looks like this:

So when I started asking the people around whether they have heard of any yoga courses, they either laughed at me, or thought I was “weird”. Yoga in their mind was associated with a person like this:

Anyway, I never gave up, until finally in a few years I heard that an old lady is giving some yoga classes not far from my university, and it was a group full of university lecturers. I was very excited and started going there. It was quite a basic class with beginner asanas, but I loved so much the feeling I had after each class – being calm and content and much more optimistic about my life.

No other type of “sport” activity gave me that feeling (as I also used to run  A LOT, I went for basketball which I hated yet I was selected to play there because of my height… , and aerobics did not at all produced a similar effect either). Also, doing yoga helped me to lose some weight, which was a very nice bonus (as I have always wanted to be “a little bit thinner”!!!!).

So I loved those weekly classes, and went there for a few months, until my Mum noticed that I have become generally calmer and coped with my as well as her emotions much easier (she is a highly emotional person and I was often a sort of responsible person for calming her down).  And that I was perhaps a bit less involved into stressful situations which held me back, and was more focused on what I was doing in life instead.

And one day she came up with a conclusion that this is because the classes where I go are a Religious cult!!! This is how she thought our classes were:

So she said that I must stop going there. I then invited her for a class, she went there, she decided it is still something not worth doing, even though she accepted that it is not a religious cult, and “just in case” I should not go there anyway to waste time that I could spend to study more instead:

It was not until 10 years later, when yoga practise has become well-known and a very “ordinary” set of classes in my city being taught nearly in every gym, when my Mum started going to the classes, called me and said how much she loved them… I have never reminded her my tough time when she was trying to ban me to go there….I just smiled and was happy for her.

So my yoga practise supported me in my university life, allowing me to stay more concentrated on what I was doing. And ever since then, yoga supported me in various periods of my life:

1.       When I moved to Moscow to work in a big company, with high level of everyday pressure and stress.

2.       When I entered the Moscow Higher School of Economics. To help to stay more calm during exams periods.

3.       When I moved to Paris to continue working for the multinational company.

4.       When I became pregnant.

5.       In labour.

6.       It is helping me now being a new mum, to cope better with new exciting responsibilities.

It was not until I became a Mum, when thanks to my very precious Husband who gave me this opportunity, I signed up for the Yoga Teacher training course in the UK and here we go, I am so happy to share the gift of yoga with my first students this year!

I would like to thank God for my life the way it is, thank my Family, thank Michelle my yoga teacher and thank each of my students, who without knowing it perhaps inspire me and give me so much pleasure to be able to pass & share what I have learned to far. If our yoga classes support them in their life at least 0.01%, I will be honoured!

This is my yoga journey so far… And how did you first hear about yoga and what made you start your own yoga practise?