Like most other teenagers, I listen to loud music, hang out with my loud friends, and argue loudly with my parents. But unlike most of my peers, when the noise becomes too much to handle, I have a silent safety net to dive into. I have yoga.
I am an 18-year-old yogi: I practice asana twice daily, eat a vegetarian diet, go to kirtans, read the Bhagavad Gita, and meditate. At first, yoga was not a spiritual practice for me, but a way to complement my training as a professional climber. I figured yoga would help me stay strong and connected with my body, but I had no idea how much stability and confidence it would give me.
Yoga has made the world of SATs, final exams, and
college applications seem conquerable, and it has improved my performance as a competitive rock climber. More important, though, the practice has made me confident that, regardless of how I perform in any of those departments, I am still going to feel awesome, and feeling awesome is something every teen could use a little more of.
My yoga practice makes me something of an oddity among my peers. My teachers tell me that more men used to practice yoga and that many of them began to study yoga in their teens. It makes sense that people would pick up a serious yoga practice during the transition from childhood to adulthood, especially now, when you consider the social and academic pressures of modern teenage life. To show my fellow teenagers that yoga is "fly," I started a club at school—a handful of us make up a kula that practices together on Tuesday mornings. I'm taking the elementary steps toward Anusara teacher certification so that I can properly lead the group. And along the way, I'm showing a few of my peers a little bit about how to quiet down.
