by Ari Witkin
About 15 years ago, my mom dragged me to my first yoga class. She’d been practicing since the 70’s and had experienced many of the benefits that yoga brings. I say “dragged” because I really had very little interest in going. My impression, especially as a teenage boy, was that it was just for women or it was too hippy for me. Despite my apprehensions, I joined her in class because I knew it’d be good for me. I played basketball, baseball, and ran cross-country in high school and my muscles were incredibly tight. In a forward fold, I could barely reach past my knees – the thought of touching my toes was laughable. I continued to go sparingly over the years, without much progress.
After I finished grad school in 2008, I moved to Washington, DC and took a job with the Brookings Institution. I taught classes in National Security Policy Issues and Legislative Strategies. Like most in DC, I wore a suit and tie every day and, for someone who’s always been a bit laid back, work created a lot more stress than I wanted in my life.
A good friend of mine invited me to a yoga studio a few blocks from my apartment and I immediately fell in love. My two teachers there were incredible! The owner was a German woman, who had served as Chief of Staff to a Senator and then worked as a senior manager at the World Bank. She completely broke down after years of added stress and decided to make a career shift into yoga. Her sequencing was challenging, yet accessible.
Her boyfriend (now her husband) also taught at the studio. I saw a lot of myself in his teaching style. He was a complete goofball, as am I, but I was making random jokes while leading discussions on how the Senate Foreign Relations Committee can affect global nuclear proliferation – my style of teaching just didn’t fit what I was teaching.
I decided to move back home to Austin about three years ago and make my own career shift. I now work in the health & fitness world and teach three yoga classes every week.
I was introduced to yoga through the lens of an athlete who needed to stretch. I fell in love with it as a way to calm my system during an unnecessarily stressful time in my life. Today, each practice serves a different purpose. Sometimes, a vigorous flow is a great workout. Other times a restorative practice provides the perfect amount of rest to reinvigorate my entire system. I have a meditation and asana (pose) practice and take the intention of my yoga practice off my mat and share the joy its brought me to friends and strangers alike.
Traditionally, yoga is a lifelong practice in order to achieve a connection to a deity – to achieve a level of bliss through the eight limbs of yoga. I have great admiration for those who have dedicated their lives to this journey, but understand that, for most people, including myself, yoga can mean something different in each practice.
The point is this – whether you come to my class, Morgan’s, another studio, have a home practice, or enjoy the benefits of yoga for a few moments during the fusion portion of other classes at the shop, yoga is whatever you want and need it to be.
Stretch it out with Ari on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6:30pm. Register here.
