Guest Post: Andrea Peteresen on Yoga and Transformation

Andrea Petersen completed OWY's teacher training last spring and is teaching in our Norwalk Studio - Monday Yoga Flow at 9:00 AM and Tuesday All Level Yoga at 5:00 PM. In this piece Andrea shares some the joys and challenges she experienced on the deep internal dive that yoga can inspire. Join us this month as we continue to explore the theme of transformation by focusing on Tree Pose and asking ourselves the question: What are you transforming?
Andrea's answer: Herself.

-Shannon Leigh

Yoga & Transformation

I was lucky to have been introduced to meditation and yoga as a child. I've had a long, but sporadic yoga practice for over 35 years. Sometimes going years between consistent practice and other times being very focused and dedicated. When our daughter was small, a twice daily practice got me through exhaustion of raising a family and full time work. Massage school was next and became my vocation. I often think that I focused on the healing of others as a salve to my own suffering. Completing yoga teacher training was on my list long before massage therapy school was in my life, but the time to leave my small family for a month long intensive just wasn't feasible. Nearly 20 years ago two suicides very close together in our family left us completely shattered. As a way to cope and by necessity, I became the weight bearing bedrock for my loved ones as they tried, not always successfully, to find the way through. I began to suffer and repress my own need for help; I was just trying to hold up a falling house of cards that I kept together using pieces of myself as the glue. Hardening my heart to save it from any more pain had the unintended affect of dulling all emotions and leaving me feeling isolated and stunted. This is not to say that there wasn't love or fun or happiness during these times, but that the joy and positive feelings and experiences were blunted. Yoga and sitting in meditation would call to me and still, out of fear for what I may find inside my head and heart, I only gave myself an intermittent practice. Eventually I gave myself a gift of a weekly practice and WOW, there was some ugly stuff in the Pandora's box of my brain! Even so, the benefits were so powerful that I kept doing it. Touching those parts in my heart were incredibly painful, so I foucused on the physical parts and got a little space in my head. Finally, after what seemed like forever, I threw myself back into a deep practice in hopeful preparation for the physical demands of teacher training. I lay on my mat while the tears rolled during nearly every savasana and sometimes even in the middle of class. I was accessing parts of my heart that had been fortified and hidden away for so long that tears were the only outlet regardless of the emotions behind them. Little cautious dips into the scary well of repressed emotions had done much to prove that I wouldn't die or crumble the next time I looked inside. By the time my actual opportunity to begin my teacher training at Open Way arrived I had begun to feel safe enough in my own skin to sit and explore and (YES!) let go of so much emotional baggage that I had been sitting on like a dragon hoard. There was no way I could have peeled the curtains back all the way in one quick motion. What a joyous experience it is to discover true peace and overwhelming love inside by just being still and listening without all that brain chatter! The personal journey I've been on has been silent and profound and I have rediscovered myself. The physical aspects of Hatha Yoga get me on my mat but it's the inner work that keeps me coming back. Brian and Shannon and all the yogis at Open Way have truly created a community that allows for anyone to come and practice just as they are. I truly have no words for the immense gratitude I have for the people and space that make up Open Way Yoga and the gift I have been given. Thank you, to all of you that make up this community. Even if you don't know it, you've contributed to my rediscovery and rebirth by just being who you are, on your mats. As a teacher, If I can give back some of what I've received then I'll call that true success.