Yoga Saved My Life
Welcome Guest Blogger Bailey Caskey and How Yoga Changed her mindset on movement and exercise and the relationship with her body.
Not to be dramatic or anything, but yoga CHANGED my life. It changed my relationship with exercise and with my own body., and now, I cannot imagine my life without yoga
Like most kids, I grew up in sports and not in a yoga studio. I had played softball for as long as I could remember. The softball field was where I spent every weekend and where I met my closest friends. There was a time in my life that I genuinely couldn’t imagine my life without it. Most of my early experiences with the sport were positive. But one day, I walked off the field for my own good.
Like so many young athletes, I experienced a toxic coach. All it took was this one coach to change what softball meant to me. I began to see my body as a burden, any exercise as punishment, and my teammates as my enemies.
Near the end, I was caught in a vicious and unhealthy cycle. I woke up, slugged my way through the school day, afraid that if I had anything more than water, I would be slower and somehow less- than at practice. I cried on my way to the field each day and wiped my tears to get through practice. I’d pack into my car to cry again after practice before eating dinner, rushing through homework, and tossing and turning all night before I did it all over again the next day. I look back on photos of myself during that time and I was just a body moving through the motions..
When I finally choose to take care of myself and quit the team, I wanted nothing to do with any sort of exercise. I was burnt out, and I wasn’t willing to engage with anything that reminded me of this negative experience. I recognized that while I once loved the sport with all of my being, there was nothing that I could do in the given circumstances that would bring that love back, especially when it was doing real damage to my mental health.
Eventually, I knew I needed exercise for my mental health and for my overall health, but I knew I didn’t want it to resemble the type of exercise I was used to.
So, I decided yoga was the perfect option for me. No one ever really recommended it to me, I had just decided to try a class out at the local gym because to me, it was the furthest thing from my distorted perception of exercise. However, t was exactly what I needed, and I didn’t even know it.
I started with very basic beginner’s yoga at the gym and literally stumbled into a hot yoga class one day (and I HATED it, but that’s a story for another time). Despite my broken relationship with exercise, I continued to show up for yoga. It never felt like exercise, or at least not in the way exercise felt before I quit softball. Then, it became more than movement for me. It evolved into an integrated practice of mind, body, and breath.
That essential connection of the mind, body, and breath has helped me to heal old wounds. The practice of yoga has helped me to stop criticizing my body for what it can’t do and celebrate what it can. My practice is my own, and every moment on my mat is my time to claim the power I possess.
The transformation I experienced is why I chose to join the 200-hour teacher training program at Kris’. It was a decision I made for myself that even as lingering doubts from my negative experience with softball still circle my brain from time to time, I continue to have the power to do what is right for me, even when it is hard. And it is…completing 200 hours of teacher training is no easy feat, but it was the perfect next step for my growth in yoga; not only so I could deepen my own practice, but so I could foster the space for transformation for others.
Yoga changed my life and as a newly certified instructor, I get to witness yoga changing others’ lives. It is my negative experience from my past that makes cultivating the right atmosphere so important to me as an instructor. And what an incredible privilege it is to create a healthy and intentional space for discovery and transformation for everyone who steps into the studio.