Yoga Twists and Turns

I’ve been practicing yoga in Santa Monica for 15 years.

I’ve considered myself a yoga whore for most of those years.

Yoga whore, meaning I just jump from one teacher to the next and never really stay with one teacher on a weekly basis. Except for a few months practicing with Scott and learning the Ashtanga 1^st series,  I haven’t really connected with too many teachers.  Scott moved away and I was back to my old ways.

The teachers that I return to all have something to offer me while I’m in class, but I never feel the desire to practice with 1 teacher on a week to week basis…until I met Travis Eliot.

Travis has a way with words and an amazing voice that seems to touch me on a soul level. 

He has figured out the perfect balance between the physical and spiritual elements of yoga.  It really works for me.

There is poetry in motion when practicing with Travis.

His words blend and glide along effortlessly and it tends to rub off on his students.  At the end of class, people seem rung out like a dish towel–in a good way.  We just let it go and let it flow.

Yes, it’s challenging, but when you’ve made it through, the day seems to start anew.

Over a year ago, I shared my Travis experience with my friend Brigitte.  She was similar to me in the exact opposite way–she never went and tried new teachers.  When I invited her to come and check out Travis’ class,  I guess I  swayed her to step out of that box. 

She loved it and we made it a weekly event.  Sometimes we were able to go twice a week.

Going to yoga with someone else opened my world up in so many ways.  I started to feel like I belonged in that space and Travis started looking forward to seeing us.  We brightened his morning and he was the centerpiece of our days together.  After class, we’d usually walk a block or two in the heart of Santa Monica and get a healthy smoothy or a gorgeous green drink.

Truly, these were blissful days!

Month after month this was our routine…until it wasn’t.  You know, life gets in the way and schedules change and that’s what happened to being able to go to yoga with a friend.  We couldn’t coordinate going to that class so we were on our own.

I went back to my old ways and bounced around from studio to studio.

This last Thursday we were able to go to Travis’ class after not being there for months.  As we entered the studio, we lit up when we saw his face.  And yes, his face lit up when he saw us enter!

I have noticed that change is inevitable and things can’t always stay the same.

It’s a bit of a challenge when something good comes to an end because we long for it and remember how good it once was.

The thrill is to be able to get it back–if only for a day here and there.  A memory is fine but being there again was Divine!  Thank you Travis,  thank you Brigitte, having you both there made my dreams complete!

Stay tuned for the next yoga story… while jumping in and out of classes that matched our schedules, we found the female version of Travis–someone we wanted to go back to over and over again.  It was a different time slot, of course, and it will be a story that stands alone–next time!