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I hated yoga the first time I tried it in 2000. During my first class, I lay on my back with my hands on my stomach, trying to feel my
breath, but all I could think about was the time I was wasting when I could be burning calories by running or taking a step class. I had come of age in
the 1980s, with Jane Fonda encouraging us to “feel the burn,” and I was also transitioning out of a career in law. The stillness of yoga was
disconcerting, uncomfortable, and completely foreign.
It took about twenty or thirty classes for me to begin to enjoy my time on the mat. It
was even longer before I went to classes because I wanted to, not because I thought I should. I’m lucky I didn’t give up on the practice,
though; yoga has helped me through some horribly difficult transitions in my life and has made me a better person. Simply put, I like the post-yoga
Marjorie a lot more than the pre-yoga Marjorie. I am more present, more patient, more emotionally available and less guarded. Less importantly
(but still cool), I can now stand on my head and balance on my arms, tricks I learned after the age of forty.
I never intended to be a yoga teacher. I enrolled in Moksha’s teacher training in 2007 simply to take my practice a step further.
However, the experience of bringing my knowledge of yoga’s gifts to my students has been yoga’s gift to me. I am continuing my journey as a student
as well. I completed Ana Forrest’s teacher training in 2008 and have studied with numerous national and local teachers, including Seane Corn, Aadil Palkhivala,
Gabriel Halpern, Leanne Carey, Rusty Wells, Kishan Shah, Steve Emmerman and Talya Ring. My greatest teacher is my family, which teaches me love,
compassion, patience, joy, and finding the beauty in something less than perfect.
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