Bindi Meets Yoga | My Yoga Journey

It was nearly a decade ago that yoga first embraced my heart and saved my life.

My childhood— as happy, beautiful and absolutely perfect as it was, contained trauma. A lot of it. I experienced things in my childhood that were beyond my capacity to cope.

At the age of 13, I began to experience some intense neurological and mental ‘happenings’— medical doctors and specialists diagnosed these happenings as epilepsy, anxiety disorder, bulimia, self-injury and substance abuse.

From an adult perspective and more mature mind, I see clearly now that I was sick from stress. My brain was physiologically “electrocuting” itself because I could not cope with the trauma I was experiencing— as a mechanism of defense seizures would shut down my brain to ‘protect’ me.

For several months I was experiencing episodes which admitted me in and out of hospitals for medical tests and procedures, and intense prescription drugs– I was in a deep downward spiral of suffering. I would have a seizure, take drugs, and then sleep for 18 hours of the day because due to mental exhaustion from it all.

One day, after sobering up from a seizure and drugs, I experienced a moment of clarity. I remember telling my mother that I didn’t want to take the drugs anymore. I expressed to her that I would rather have seizures and experience mental and emotional fluctuations than to feel nothing at all. I tried to explain to her a deep inner knowing that was within me that ignited a deep desire for recovery. Shortly after making the decision to go off the drugs, and beginning to explore a more natural route to recovery, I discovered yoga.

I developed a daily yoga and meditation practice, I switched to a healthful vegan diet, and began studying and applying a variety of ancient healing modalities. Within one month, I was completely seizure free, drug free and free of so much suffering.

My sickness was a spiritual awakening.

For the next several years of my life I was fueled by a deep desire for knowledge. Yoga, meditation, holistic health and wellness naturally became my passion and purpose. At 13 years old I began informal studies in the infinity of health and wellness. At 15, I became a Reiki practitioner. At 16, I had formally studied Natural Health Fundamentals, and Holistic Nutrition with a specialty in vegan and vegetarian diets.

It was the day after my 18th birthday that I found myself on a plane headed to an ashram in India. It was my first Yoga Teacher Training— a profound experience of a whole month of intensive yoga, meditation, chanting, purifying, self-study and powerful wisdom teachings. It was a beautiful, and deeply transformational month that challenged all aspects of my being and that profoundly enhanced my life.

At 19, I returned to the ashram life in Thailand and studied with my beloved teachers Lily Goncalves and Ramananda Mayi with Blooming Lotus Yoga— a deeply profound experience into the essence of yoga. A month of self-discovery, recovery, healing and learning the art of surrender and radical self-love.

And today— at the age of 22, I begin my third Yoga Teacher Training with my teachers in Bali. An experience fertile with so much knowledge, potent insight, and even deeper inner transformation.

I am infinitely grateful for my teachers, my lineage, my students, and this beautiful journey called yoga.