My journey to become a yoga teacher officially begins tomorrow. But really, it started seven years ago.
I practiced yoga for the first time when I was 15 years old. A couple of friends and I decided we wanted to try something new, so we signed up for a once a week beginner yoga class. I can remember looking at the poster outside the studio of all the most advanced poses and thinking how amazing it was. It was like seeing something from the circus. It was amazing to see, but I couldn't even touch my toes. There was no way I would ever be able to bend that way.
Each class I would spend so much of my time staring at the clock wishing time would go faster. I would leave feeling pretty good, but when the three month session ended, I had no desire to sign up again. I had tried yoga, it wasn't for me.
A few years later, a studio opened up near where I live. I decided to give it another chance. I had been hearing all about the amazing benefits of yoga, and I figured it was about time I started caring about my health. So I bought a groupon for three months of unlimited yoga. I went three times.
I just could not find the motivation to go. I said I couldn't quiet my mind enough, I wasn't flexible enough, I didn't like the feeling of burning muscles as I had heard some people did. Again, I had given it a try, and it wasn't my thing.
Over the next few years, I finally did find the motivation I needed to have a regular exercise routine. It took me gaining twenty pounds to find it, but I finally had the desire to live a healthier life. I went to the gym a few times a week, and slowly but surely started eating better.
However, when was 19, I all of a sudden fell into a rut. Suddenly I couldn't find the motivation to go to the gym. When I did get myself there, I would do a couple little circuits, get bored, and go home. I couldn't figure out what had happened. I started to gain weight again, and I was miserable.
One day, on my way home from school, I saw a sign advertising free hot yoga. It turns out a new studio had opened up, and was offering free classes for the first week. I had never tried hot yoga before, and decided it was worth a try. At the very least, maybe it would give me the motivation I needed to get back to the gym. I remember the feeling I had the first time I walked into the change room at Hot Yoga Wellness. I looked around, and I just knew I would be spending a lot of time here. I couldn't explain it. I hadn't even tried a class yet, but something about it just felt right. It felt like home.
Sure enough, I loved the classes. I went almost everyday for that first free week. And as luck would have it, they were looking for energy exchangers. This meant that in exchange for free yoga, I would work at the studio four hours a week, mopping floors, folding towels, anything that needed to be done around the studio.
After only a few weeks of dedicated practice, I found myself craving yoga. Not only that, but I was back at the gym! I was eating healthy again, and I cared about my wellbeing.
After only a few months, I started to notice a difference in my behaviour, and how I felt in general. The "yoga high" I felt immediately after leaving a class started to last longer and longer. I found myself having more control over my emotions, and seeing life more clearly. It was like a fog had been lifted and I was now truly living life.
Inevitably, I wanted to spread it. I wanted to tell the whole world about how yoga had changed my life. And that's when I started researching teacher trainings.
Today, I can not imagine where I would be without yoga. It absolutely changed my life. I feel so grateful for the many opportunities I got to try yoga, and I am so incredibly thankful that one finally stuck.

One of the most enticing things about international travel, is the people you meet along your journey, and the lifelong bonds you form with them.
When I was 18, I lived in Kenya for four months. In the past six days, I have had the privilege of reuniting with two of the people who made that trip what it was for me. My roommates, Ben and Jack.
I decided when I was booking my flights for this trip, that there was no better way to start out a new journey, than by visiting the people I met on my last travel journey. I booked Chicago for 5 days, and London for 1, with the plan to return there after Spain.
From the minute I got into Ben's car in Chicago, it was like no time had passed at all. I felt completely and utterly at ease with him, just as I had when we were living together in Kenya three years ago. It was easy to see that both of us had changed considerably in our time apart. We had matured and grown. We are at very different places in our lives today, but we still have the same core values and beliefs that brought us together in the first place.
The same was true with Jack. We always had such a great time together. Me making fun of his accent, and him mine. We share so many similar interests and absolutely never run out of things to talk about.
It's funny to think that if I had never gone to Kenya, neither Ben, or Jack would be a part of my life. And not just them, but everyone I met on that trip. One of my very best friends, Katie, is living in Calgary, has a home, a husband, and a baby on the way. But every time I visit her, I see that dirty ass blonde girl I shared a twin sized bed with in a shack made of sheet metal.
Travel creates the strongest of bonds. You go through things with them that you can never truly explain to another living soul. You go through times when you want to kill each other, but when it's time to say good bye, it truly feels like you are saying good bye to a family member. Someone who, in a few short months, has managed to become so important that they actually become a part of you, and you a part of them.
 I am so incredibly thankful for the opportunity ahead of me to meet so many more people who will steal a piece of my heart. But I know I will never ever lose the friends I have already made. I love you, losers. But don't you dare tell anyone I said that.

A year. 52 weeks. 365 days. 8766 hours. These were the thoughts going through my head as I stood in the security line at the Edmonton airport watching my best friend and my boyfriend disappear into the crowd. I was suddenly acutely aware of just how utterly alone I was.
For months leading up to my trip, I had variations of the same reaction when I told people I would be making this journey alone. "You're crazy!" or "Wow... alone? I would never do that." I always brushed it off. Alone was the only way to do it, as far as I was concerned. But all of a sudden, the word "alone" felt different to me. Where it had once stirred an excitement within me, I now felt fear and loneliness.
The flight to Phoenix was restless. I managed to sleep on and off. When I was awake, all I could think about was what I was leaving behind. My life at home was good. It was great! What was I doing? I tried to read. I couldn't focus. I listened to music. It all reminded me of home.
Finally, after what seemed like forever, the plane landed in Phoenix. While we sat on the tarmac, waiting for our gate to clear, the woman next to me asked me if I was staying in Phoenix. I started to explain to her that I would be in Phoenix for 5 days, but I wouldn't be returning to Edmonton for a year or so. All of a sudden I was crying. As I told her about my amazing adventure ahead of me, tears rolled down my cheeks. I was embarrassed. I figured she would judge me. What kind of spoiled kid gets to go on the trip of a lifetime and cries about it? But much to my surprise. she didn't bat an eye.
"I did a trip very similar to that when I was your age," she said. "I lived and worked in Australia for a year, and afterwords, I travelled Asia for two months. Are you going alone?"
I told her I was, fully expecting the same reaction I had had most other times I had received this question. But much to my surprise, she smiled.
"It's the only way to do it," she told me. "You may be embarking alone, but once you begin your trip, you are never alone."
I thanked her, she went on her way, and I went on mine. But over the next 5 days, her words stuck with me. I slowly realized what she meant. I am going to meet so many people on this trip. I'm leaving behind so many great people, but they will be there when I get back. They will be there for me while I'm gone when I need them. But along my way, I am going to meet so many more people. A year from now, my life will be so much richer with relationships I could never imagine my life without.
And suddenly, the word "alone" didn't feel so scary. Alone felt like an opportunity. A challenge.
Come at me world. I'm ready for anything and everything you have to offer.

Dear Self,

You are enough. You do enough. You are constantly bombarded with people telling you what you should be doing. Know that these are suggestions. They are things people have found that work for them in their lives. You can’t do it all, nor should you feel as though you have to. Try new things, but remember that what you do is what works for you and it is enough.

You are plenty. Every single thought you have, decision you make, and action you perform are what makes up you. Don’t forget that you are an individual soul. Other people influence you, things influence you, but you will never be exactly like anyone else and no one else will be exactly like you. There are infinitely many little things that make up you, and each one is as important as the next. Don’t under value yourself. You are so much.

You are everything. The entire universe is within you. Everything beautiful in the world is beautiful because it acts as a mirror, reflecting your own beauty back to you. You just have to realize it.

 You are enough, you are plenty, you are everything.

For so much of my life, I have spent so much energy always trying to be happy. When something sad in my life happened, I would just choose not to think about it, so I wouldn't be wasting minutes of my life unhappy, when I could be happy. These thoughts would continually knock at my brain, trying desperately to be let in, to be acknowledged. And I would continue to keep them locked out. Eventually, time would lessen the pain associated with what ever event or thought it was that I was trying to avoid, and I could find myself thinking about it without feeling sad or anxious. I thought I had it all figured out.
Today, I began packing up all of my belongings from my room in the basement to make room for my brother to take it over when I leave. At first, it was a chore. It was something I had to get out of the way before I left. But as I emptied out my closet, and put all of my little ornaments and picture frames into boxes, an uncomfortable sadness started to bubble up deep in my belly. Instinctively, I turned my thoughts away from everything I was leaving behind. I turned on a happy song, turned it up, and continued with my chore.
Eventually, the song ended, and I was once again alone with this feeling. The back of my throat was aching, and I knew if I let myself, tears would start to form in my eyes. And at that moment, I thought "This is sad. I'm not just packing up a room, I am closing a chapter of my life. A chapter that held so much growth, and change. These last four years have been some of the best years of my life, and now, I have to let them go." And I decided to allow myself to feel the sadness. I sat down on the floor of my bedroom, and I cried. I cried for all the great times I had sitting on the floor of that bedroom with friends. I cried for the mornings (and afternoons) I spent in that room too hungover to move. I cried for all the times I came home late at night after an exhausting day, and my bed in that room was all I wanted in that moment. For the first time in a long time, I allowed myself to feel sad.
And soon enough, just as quickly as they started, my tears dried up. I expected to feel spent. To still feel sad and want, even less than before, to continue with this terrible job. But to my surprise, I felt amazing. It was like all the sadness I was holding in was released in the form of tears. I felt like a weight had been lifted off my of heart. I no longer had to try to force the thoughts out of my head, because they didn't cause me pain anymore. I had let go.
So today I learned a lesson. Sadness is an emotion for  a reason. I am allowed to feel sad. In fact, I am supposed to feel sad! We all are! How else will we know when we're losing or letting go of something that really mattered? As long as I can eventually let go, and know that this feeling can't last forever, It's healthy to be sad. It's more that just healthy, it's human.