A little bit more about…(Pt 1)

I thought it would be fitting to start my first blog post with a little introduction about myself and the beginning of my yoga journey.

To start off, I was born to an American Korean mother and a Lebanese father. My parents met in San Francisco when they were studying there and that’s how I came into this world. Born in Paris on May 4th, 1992, my family and I moved to Kuwait when I was under 1 year old. I grew up there for 18 years and attended the French school which is how I speak English, French and a little bit of Arabic. Anyone who meets me will say I have an accent in every single language I speak which I used to not like about myself but now I think it’s actually cool because nobody can guess where I’m from. I can’t remember the number of times people asked me if I’m Spanish, Latino or Hispanic. I was once even stopped on the road in NYC by someone asking me for directions in Spanish. I looked confused at the person and said I didn’t speak any Spanish. They started shouting at me as though I was denying my roots… I guess also having the name Maria doesn’t help my case. Oh well.

Once I graduated high school, I decided to pursue my studies in San Diego to study Finance and Political Science. It was the best 4 years of my life. I was so lucky to have made long lasting friendships and it was only in my final few weeks of school that I discovered yoga. It was through my personal trainer at the gym that I decided to go to my first class. It was love at first try. I couldn’t believe I had waited that long to try yoga because of how good I felt when I left the class. This feeling of lightness as though I was floating on a cloud. I was hooked from the very beginning and it’s definitely thanks to the teacher who taught me (Elyssa aka @lionandswan on Instagram).

Rewinding back to my earlier years, I remember the first time I heard the word yoga. I was not older than 8 years, sitting in the backseat of our old white Range Rover going into the basement of our building. My mom was driving and said she just came back from a yoga class. I asked her what it was and she answered it was some sort of physical exercise with breathing. I didn’t think much of it. My 2nd encounter with yoga was when I was 12 years old. I would pretend to “do yoga” at the bowling alley. I remember it so clearly, I would roll the ball and immediately sit down with my legs in lotus and start saying “come on strike strike strike”. A lot of the times the ball would actually move from falling into the gutter and magically move to the center and I would knock down all the pins. My friends around me would all laugh hysterically because it was hilarious to witness. Going back to that time, I still don’t know how I knew how sitting in lotus repeating affirmative mantras was yoga but I did. Fast forward 10 years later, I finally find myself in an actual yoga class.

Dimmed lights, sitting at the back of the class, I didn’t know what to expect. I surely didn’t think that this class was about to change my whole life. I just wanted to support my PT who became a really good friend of mine. The tone of her voice was gentle, the energy in the room was calm and centered. It is one of those pivotal moments in your life where you realize that you just discovered something you’ve been craving your whole life: stillness, and mental peace. For years, I struggled with an overly active monkey brain. For years, anxiety was something I thought would never go away. For years, I just believed that my thoughts were me. I was so hooked on yoga that throughout summer I was practicing here and there. I wanted to feel that feeling over and over again. I didn’t know much of the philosophy of yoga or how it could be so therapeutic but that feeling after you come out of savasana and your eyes are wide open like you’re seeing the world for the first time again. No attachments to your past, no worries about your future. Just being present. That same summer I went to a bookstore and bought myself books like The Power of Now, The Secret and another one about changing your thoughts. (Sorry I can’t remember the name!) Slowly but surely, my life was finally making sense to me.

Yoga could not have come at a better time. I was transitioning from being a student to a full time employee in an Asset management company. My first real job. All my life I thought that this would be my path: school, university, job, and then marriage and kids. And that’s what I was planning on doing. At first my job was not very demanding. I was still new and I wasn’t given much work. As the months went on and I started acquiring more responsibilities, I also was getting more stressed out. So at the end of the day, I would run to a yoga class. I needed to unleash all the accumulated stress from work and being in a big busy city like London. Yoga classes were my haven and they still are.

TBC in next post…