What Makes You Shine

For March Break, my four-year old daughter Lizzie went to an arts camp. In last week’s post, I wrote about her love for art and that all things creative make her shine from the inside out. All week I found myself in conversations with people about passion, about what makes us shine.

For one of my friends, it is sailing; for another, it is working with kids with special needs; for our very own YummyMummyClub editor, Sharon, it has been speed skating. What has been clear is that when you find "that thing", you just know.

For me, it is yoga. I love running, I love writing, I love outdoor physical activities and all of my creative pursuits, but I always come back to yoga. From the first class I took in 1994 - when there were few studios to choose from, and before lululemon was even an idea (imagine!) – I knew I had found my thing. It was a place where I could connect: with my body (both strengthening and nurturing it); and with my mind (calming my worries and my tendency to overthink). I loved that I left every class feeling “whole.”



After that first class, I went up to the teacher and said, I am going to teach yoga one day. And sure enough, five years later, I took a leave of absence from my work as the Director of a drama School for kids and teens, and headed to an ashram in the Sierra Nevada mountains in California for a live-in intensive teacher training. It’s funny to look back on this. Most of my friends and family thought I was crazy. Although it had enjoyed a bout of popularity in the 70s, yoga was certainly not in the mainstream. People asked me, “why would you want to train as a yoga teacher?” And I didn’t even know how to explain it. I just knew that it was something I had to do.


Despite the yoga centre having a great reputation in the yoga world, my dad thought I was joining a cult. Cell phones were still for emergencies so I didn’t take mine. (Besides, it was so big, it wouldn’t have fit in my purse!) There was one payphone we could use to call home, and certainly no public computer. My dad thought I was joining a cult. To quell his fears, my brother and I came up with a code-word that I could say on a collect call home if I needed to be “saved”. 


Clearly I didn’t need saving. It was an incredible experience and I returned to Toronto with many ideas of ways I could continue to integrate yoga into my life and work. Within a few months of completing my teacher training, I moved to London, England and set up shop as a yoga instructor, working with athletes, and catering to companies who wanted to bring health initiatives into the workplace. Again, looking back I am amazed at my tenacity. I hadn’t run a yoga business before, let alone in a different country, but it just seemed to be the thing I had to do. I met some incredible people and was teaching in law firms, tv stations, communications/pr firms and working with runners and sports teams. 



When I returned to Toronto a year later, some of my creative pursuits were taking off and I found myself working as a playwright/writer/performer half of the time and running my yoga business the other half.

 Although my life has taken many fabulous twists and turns in the past twelve years, I still split my time much the same way. I spend half of my working life writing and in creative mode, and the other half teaching yoga and Pilates and speaking about health and wellness. Along the way, I have gotten married, moved to Ottawa and back, and had two amazing children.

 What has not changed at all is the feeling I have when I step onto my yoga mat. It’s been seventeen years since my first yoga class and, still, regardless of life circumstances, my mood, or what’s going on in my body, I step onto my mat and I am smiling inside. This, to me, is passion. 



What makes you shine?