I started doing yoga when I was 15 years old, but my practice began when I was 18 years old. My high school boyfriend’s mom introduced me to a hot (and I mean 100 degrees, 60% humidity HOT) yoga studio, and I freakin’ loved it. I loved how open I was able to get with the heat, how much I sweated, and how I felt completely worked out and detoxified at the end of class. The asana was more of my focus at the time since I was not truly aware of the mental, emotional, and spiritual depth yoga had to offer. So that is why I describe that era a ‘do’, and not a ‘practice’.

When I was 18 years old, my outlook on the future of my life was closing in with college applications, choosing which ones, costs, and choosing a Gap Year or not. I desperately wanted to travel as my travel bug was on fire ever since I went abroad for the first time when I was 16. The bug was strong even before then, but after a taste, it needed more.

I was living in a nice, safe little bubble. I attended a private school that I had been going to since I was 9 years old. There was only 137 people in my class, so I knew everyone. I had lived in the same house for 12 years in the same town I was born in. I didn’t realize it at the time, but despite my curiosity and passion of travel, I had gotten used to this bubble. And I was scared to leave it.

I started gaining weight via this underlying stress, which for me was new. I was always a skinny and fairly tall girl. But as 2013 rolled around, I gained about 15 pounds in three months. Personally, this was horrifying and confusing. I never gained that kind of weight in my life, let alone in that time period. I started going to yoga more and more (before I would go every now and again), so much I would go 5 times a week. But the weight stayed. I didn’t get it.

As I questioned and wondered, my mind started searching beyond the normal ideas. I began to self-reflect on my life—where I was going, what I was wanting to do—and how it made me feel. Then, I felt myself become more aware of the yoga between the lines. No longer was I just listening to the cues, I was hearing the philosophies that crept into each class, I finally understood and felt what certain cues meant, physical and mental. Things started to click more and more as my mind began to open and I was willing to surrender my ego. This is when my practice began. And this is when my life changed.

I decided that hell yes I’m gonna take a Gap Year and then go to school for science, animals, and ecology and hey, maybe get yoga teacher certified. These were the things I was passionate about and felt inexplicably drawn to. And so I did them. I did exactly what my gut told me to do. My life changed because I decided to trust my gut—trust myself. And it didn’t even feel like a decision, but rather a slide into what was already there, waiting to be listened to. I just had to be willing to open, and the rest came.