Part two – the stress(!), sharing and living of yoga
‘So hang on a minute, you’re telling me you’re feeling really stressed out about yoga, which was what you started practicing to feel less stressed?’ asked my partner, and yes, the irony hadn’t been lost on me either, as I sat down at my desk to work on meeting yet another assignment deadline.
Yoga teacher training, it turned out, was indeed, ironically quite stressful, especially when trying to fit it in around a demanding day job which also involved at least three hours of daily commuting.
My days were spent working in Cambridge helping veterinary students with their clinical skills training, and in my evenings I toiled away on yoga philosophy, the ethics of yoga teaching, human anatomy, breath control practices, variations of the different postures and more. Sometimes there were also teachings to prepare or daily practices to do with reflective diaries to keep. It was, as they say, a lot. But equally something was happening; something was solidifying as I imbibed these practices, something that felt life-long.
What I could see in my teacher’s eyes as they glistened when they explained parts of the Gita to us, was starting to slowly hum through my veins too.
The good thing about being what is sometimes termed a ‘householder yogi’ – i.e., someone that is practicing their yoga alongside the demands of everyday life as opposed to someone who disappears to a cave or forest to devote themselves to yoga and only yoga – is that you understand the demands your students have to negotiate to get to their practice, because you have them too. Being a yoga teacher doesn’t make you immune to such things, and so it was with this insight, alongside my passion to share a practice that had given me so much, that I approached teaching my very first community class.
I started teaching publicly and not just within the confines of our teacher training group a fair bit earlier than I had envisaged, with the serendipity of a Fit Villages program looking for a yoga teacher in my village, and the encouragement of my teacher.
I still remember those early days and although much in my teaching has changed since then, as I’ve gained in confidence and experience, one thing remains the same, and that is the privilege I feel to have students put their trust in me to share the practice of yoga with them.
In teaching yoga, I discovered a nourishment akin to being on the mat myself. And when my students started to share how yoga was helping them as it had helped me, I soon realised that I wanted to be doing more of this and less of my day job. And so it was that my occupation slowly but surely shifted, with ever decreasing time in veterinary education and a gradual building of yoga teaching, until the latter came to fully replace the former.
Meanwhile, away from my teaching, other shifts were happening in parallel. A first pregnancy and matrescence amidst a backdrop of the covid pandemic, further family losses and grief to withstand, an unexpected need for surgery, a second pregnancy and birth; here I was experiencing the riches of life, its joys and its sorrows, all with the thread of my yoga practice running through them … the yoga memoir ‘May I Be Happy’ by Cyndi Lee, who I would go on to be taught by, keeping me company in all those lonely and masked hospital waiting rooms for pregnancy number one … my mala beads holding my hand and anchoring my breath as I laboured … yoga and meditation helping the reclamation of mind and body strength after a traumatic birth … the surrender and release of Yin Yoga to soothe and aid my recovery from sorrows and the deepest of cuts … all of these practices and more, always with me, as things moved and changed and altered.
What I’ve learned as yoga changed my life, and now changes with it, is that there is a yoga for all seasons.
The great Iyengar quote is that yoga is a flame that once lit never dims. I also like to think that yoga becomes a friend who always walks alongside you. And even if you’ve not seen each other properly for a while, as long as you maintain a thread of connection, you can pick up again with each other as if it was only yesterday. Of course, though, really the friend is you. And you never really lost touch with yourself. You were always there waiting, and the yoga mat was just there to help call you home.
© Catherine Rolfe 2025