Home is Within Me, By Christine Tran
Before I tell you how grateful I am for having completed my 200-hour YTT through Hothouse Yoga, that I couldn’t imagine having completed it anywhere else but Hothouse, I first need to tell you that I never wanted my certification to happen here.
I have been doing yoga for 4 years now, but my yoga journey, what would eventually lead me to it, truly began the second I was born. There was love in my family, absolutely - but it was also dysfunctional and toxic, having planted little seeds of toxicity deep within me along the way. Through my unstable childhood, weaving through my parent’s messy divorce, dealing with an emotionally unavailable mother who didn’t know how to give unconditional love, navigating being a minority in a time and place where it wasn’t the friendliest, I collected enough of those seeds until I became fractured as a person, disconnected from self. I didn’t trust people at all. Least of all, myself.
The disconnection was at its highest and most uncomfortable during my teen years, so I found solace in drugs, every single one of them, culminating in the ultimate comfort with heroin in my 20s. I didn’t have to think about how I was letting everyone down when I was using; I didn’t have to think about how life had let me down when I was shoving a needle into my arm; I didn’t have to hate myself as I watched my potential go to waste when I was high. I gravitated to other broken souls, especially men, and we forged toxic relationships. It didn’t feel toxic to me then, even as we were getting arrested and incarcerated and evicted from apartments. It felt like love. They were the only relationships I knew how to have.
My last incarceration was a big one. I was sent to prison, but it honestly saved me. That 18-month prison stay was my catalyst for change. I was hungry for it: change in the biggest way. Upon release, I began making amends with my family. I was accepted into the University of Iowa, where I constantly made the Dean’s List. I landed a job in Corporate America, doing all the things that I thought made a good, appropriate life.
The thing they don’t tell you about this “good, appropriate” life, though, the one society tells you to live, is that a person can still feel fractured and disconnected from self, too. I was getting As in school, sure, but it didn’t feel like anything to me, except for checking something off a list. Get accepted into college, check. Get good grades, check. Carry health insurance, check.
After some time of just checking boxes, that familiar tug of disconnection began to pull at my sleeve. The desire to use drugs reappeared, and I was, yet again, involved in a toxic relationship, 4-years strong. Dragging myself miserably out of bed each morning, I would ask myself, why do I always end up feeling like this again?
I stumbled upon yoga during this time, I say by happenstance, but is anything truly ever coincidence? Within my first couple of practices, though I can’t describe what I felt, I felt something. Maybe like hope. Or possibility. This mysterious little glow felt good, and I just kept going. I developed a very robust home practice and slowly started reevaluating the way I viewed every aspect of the world. I finally got the courage to leave that toxic relationship and grew the most courage when I dared to love myself. It was almost as though the universe extended a beautiful hand out to me in the form of a yoga mat saying, “You had a hard life. It will be worth it. Now, get up and fight”.
My yoga mat was and still is my greatest weapon to this fight for self-love.
About 2 years into my practice, I decided to take the YTT plunge … but where? I understood the power of yoga and how profoundly it could change a person’s life. The place I chose to become certified had to align with my own yoga values. I was a nomadic yogi, who took her practice seriously, but one without a home studio. From outward appearances, people hardly can believe my past. Unfortunately, yoga studios can carry a stigma of exclusivity: a place of Lululemon, lemon water, and light & love – not for people from more rough and alternative backgrounds and certainly not me. I made a list of all the places in the local and surrounding area that was offering YTT, but I refused to put Hothouse Yoga down. At that point, I had done hot yoga exactly zero times, knowing I would just hate it, because I hate being hot. In the process of checking out other studios, a nagging voice kept popping into my head, “Are you really practicing yoga if you limit yourself to what you think you want?” Okay, fine yoga gods. You win. I’ll practice yoga correctly. If you insist. I popped into HHY for my first hot yoga class and a Q&A session they were holding for YTT afterwards. I had been emailing with Maureen prior to about my plans and didn’t think any more of it. On that day, in a packed yoga studio where I didn’t know a soul, having never met me once, Maureen came up to me with the warmest smile and greeted me by name. There was something about that petite, feisty blonde that drew me in.
When I told Maureen I was on the fence of where I wanted to do my YTT, she encouraged me to continue checking out the other places and to choose from my heart. She was never pushy. Though, in my heart of hearts, I already knew it was going to be HHY, pretty much from the second I walked in. The first time I felt like I was home was when I rolled out my yoga mat. The second time was when I walked through the doors of HHY. Even among the Lululemon and lemon water, I felt included and valued right away. That was important to me in a yoga studio.
Besides just a feeling, some more tactile reasons I knew HHY was meant for me was the YTT program structure. I immediately knew Maureen and Darcy took it seriously, too. I loved that a physician would be leading the anatomy portion of the program. There were also to be other guest yoga instructors who, because of their incredible knowledge on an aspect of yoga, would be providing their expertise during the training. Maureen and Darcy are excellent, encouraging, and compassionate instructors, leading and teaching from their hearts. There is a structure, but they are not afraid to go off-the-cuff, when it makes sense to the group. That, to me is doing yoga: to have a plan, but to be open and flexible in changing them, when called for. Nothing in this ever changing life is fixed.
Yoga is more than a physical practice, and HHY recognizes that. YTT through Hothouse is an unforgettable experience. Everyone’s life journey is different. Students will get what they need from it, whether it is to learn pose alignment, deepen practices, find spirituality, or form connections with self or others. And I dare say students will gain other things they didn’t expect to as well. HHY recognizes these different journeys, and lovingly guides students on their respective paths, with love.
HHY showed me that it is possible to become bigger than your fears and your past. When I think of what I want to give my students as an instructor, it is that. Thank you, HHY, for showing me how to practice love, to instruct in love, to be love. The first time I felt I was home was with my yoga mat. The second was through the doors of HHY. I have found a home studio with HHY, but the biggest thing they taught me was home is already within me.
