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Some people are lucky enough to know what they want in the early stages of their lives. Other people live their whole lives without having a clue of what they really want; they live their whole lives without a dream, without a purpose. And there are people who discover themselves in a later stage of their lives while working on themselves searching for happiness. Luckily I was one of the latter.
Like many people, I have been told that I have to go to school, I have to go to college to study according to EL TANSI2, then I have to work somewhere relevant to my studies. And so I did.
I graduated & worked for Vodafone right away, one of the best companies in Egypt. I didn’t work there because I have always dreamed of working in corporates; I only worked there because that was the logical step after my graduation, & of course it was a very good opportunity. I have learned a lot from working in Vodafone. Now when I talk about it, I feel like it was a script imposed on us, where we don’t doubt or think about it, we just implement it without a second thought.
In short, after couple of years, I got married, had a baby boy & got divorced.
I got out of this marriage a completely different person on so many levels, physically, emotionally & socially. I was 26 years old, divorced with a 2 years old kid, no work, no dreams, no friends, NOTHING…. Nothing but low self-confidence, insecurities, fears, minimal acknowledgment of self worth & to top it all 20 KG overweight.
Between working without passion, taking care of my son, I was burying all negative thoughts & feelings just to keep things moving. Food was the only thing that used to comfort me, all kind of unhealthy food, fried food, junk food, chocolate…etc. I simply stopped paying attention to my weight long time ago; I stopped seeing myself in the mirror for years. At the back of my mind I used to see myself as this fresh graduate with the perfect shape & good look & refused to accept the new me, I disliked it so I stopped seeing it.
After many years of working in Vodafone & after many years of my divorce, I realized I am not happy, I felt emptiness all the way, though it seem like I have everything, good job, secured financial income, amazing son & supportive family. Yet I am not happy.
I wasn’t sure why do I feel that way, may be its because I am gaining weight every day? I am not enjoying what I am doing at work? I can’t be the super duper mom that I have always wanted to be, I am always stressed from work, trying to prove myself, yet I can’t, because I am too consumed with the challenge of achieving balance between being a good mom & a great employee. The fact of not accepting myself, the terrible self-talk, the self-judgment I used to impose on myself, & the sense of failure I constantly felt, didn’t help a bit to find the right track.
So I knew I needed to change, but I didn’t really know how.
One day I didn’t feel well so I had to do a health check up, & the results weren’t really good, I had very high cholesterol rate that was getting into the dangerous zone & it hit me. It was the first time to stand on a weight scale for 7 years, & I found out that I am 20 KG over weight. It was the first time to look at myself in the mirror in 7 years.
I decided that this is not the life I want to live, this is not how I want to look like, & this is not how I want my son to see me. I had to start somewhere, & getting healthier was the only obvious thing to work on.
I fixed my diet; ate healthy & exercised. I lost 18 KG in less than 6 months. It wasn’t easy to change long years of terrible eating habits, but I was determined to have a healthier life.
At this point I started to study life coaching & to graduate I had to be coached number of hours, peer coaching. I was lucky to have a wonderful coach who supported me through this journey. He helped me during this period to adapt to the new system. Through our coaching sessions, I realized that I never had passion for anything; I never had a dream, a true direction in my life that reflects my true self (I didn’t even know my true self) so we worked on learning more about myself, my values, my preferences, my qualities, & my priorities.
As part of my new healthy life, I started to practice yoga, & learn more about the practice & its philosophy, the more I practiced & the more I read about the philosophy the more I pealed one layer of misperceptions & fakeness in my life that accumulated over years & years of confusion & social pressure.
So, at this point, I was working @ Vodafone while in parallel working on myself through life coaching & yoga practice trying to find a way out to a happier life.
During this time my mom was diagnosed with 4th stage Cancer. With all the ups & downs I had, my mom’s illness was the biggest hit in my life. I decided to take unpaid leave from work to spend more time with her, & I needed to figure out what do I want from this life.
During those two years, I studied yoga, finished my life coaching studies & I was fully dedicated to spend my time with my mom & son. Things started to get clearer day after day. The lessons I have learned at this phase of my life were priceless. My mom’s illness was like a message, a wake up call that I shouldn't take life for granted, I shouldn’t waste it on a job I don’t believe in, or a person I am not in love with. I shouldn’t take people for granted. It taught me that after all, crises & hard time are not meant to break us, it’s there to show us how strong we are, & how deep our faith is, it’s there to teach us our life lessons and for some people to create stronger bond with god.
I got certified to teach yoga, I started to teach my friends, & I fell in love with the idea of teaching, & I noticed that time flies when I am practicing/teaching & I got in to it with my heart & soul, it's a very different feeling that I have never experienced before. My eyes glows when I talk about yoga, it made me believe in myself again, yoga practice had transformed the way I look at things, the way I respond to things, even the way I love, & the way I honor myself.
I decided to take teaching to a higher level, so I approached a lot of yoga studios, and it was the same answer across all studios I contacted “No openings” REJECTION…. Who would open the door for someone completely un-experienced in the field of teaching?
So I kept on teaching my friends who brought more friends on the roof top of my house, & in the process of teaching I learned a lot, every time a student ask me a question I don’t have the answer for, I go study & read to learn more.
My name started to spread in the neighborhood & my classes started to be full everyday, & in the peak of my growth, I had to close down the place. A lot of new students started to join, entering my house to reach the rooftop, which wasn’t comfortable for me nor for my family, & we decided that it has to be closed down. It was devastating for me; I already loved my classes, my students & the place.
So here I go again, another challenge with another disappointment.
My unpaid leave expired, & I had to decide whether to go back to corporate life or to fight more for my new dream. It was very tempting to go back to my old job, as it will secure me financially in a time where I didn’t have income at all; yet, I have decided to quit Vodafone & start sharing my humble knowledge about yoga & coaching with other people hoping it could make a difference in their lives as it did to me. Having a cause to work for was more tempting for me than securing financial income.
Was it an easy decision?
For me it was, for people around me it was a terrible decision, I used to hear:
“Are you crazy? You are destroying your future” “You are letting go such career, company, colleagues & financial security to be a yoga teacher? Who knows you?” “Yoga teacher? Do you remember how fat you were last year? Don’t you think it's a bit late and you are too old to start a new career?
The list of demotivating words that I have received from family & friends were endless, I know it was coming from good intention from close people, but honestly it didn’t change my mind a bit, & I have decided to proceed with my passion. I am lucky enough to have parents & friends who despite their disagreement with me, they supported me all the way.
I resigned. I stayed without work or monthly income for a while, trying to find a place to teach at with no luck. A lot of time I felt the failure, sometimes I felt “maybe they were right, it’s too late and tough to start a new career from scratch.” Then I decided to have my own place to teach yoga, yet I don’t have money to open up my new place. So I took a loan from the bank & I built my own studio.
And again, demotivating voices “You will never have enough income to pay back the loan” “this is too risky” “stay in your comfort zone and go back to your first job” and so on.
For the first time, I follow my heart, & stop focusing only on calculating the risk. For the first time I open my mind to new opportunities & ask myself the best question my coach used to ask me “What is the worst that could happen?”
I built my own studio the way I have dreamed of, an open space for souls seeking help to find their own way through coaching and yoga practice. People who practice from the heart not only through the body.
My vision for this place was to build a community of people who have the same objective…to transform, with the same intention…Love.
Today I am still studying yoga every day; I am still & will always be a student trying to learn more about myself & about this beautiful practice. Beit Mariam, my studio was fortunate to have an amazing community that is full of love & purity.
Today I feel I am in the right place, I am the mom I wanted to be. I feel content & happy with what I have. If I have to say something out of my story, it would simply be:
You will always face failure & it’s always temporary, there will always be challenges, but also, you will surprise yourself with the strength & qualities you have to face those challenges.
Take advice & learn from other people experiences, but never feel obliged to follow the way other people think. No one is walking in your shoes, no one will bare the consequences of your actions & decisions except you, so at least bare the consequences of your own dream.
Follow your heart & have passion for anything you do. Without passion we will only be machines.
In my introduction to Ashtanga classes, I usually meet fine ladies, who come for the first time to a yoga class, and I hear sentences like “I have watched people practicing yoga and I believe it’s IMPOSSIBLE I can do that” or “can I practice yoga and still smoke cigarette and eat junk food? Its IMPOSSIBLE for me to quit cigarettes” I hear a lot of “IMPOSSIBLES” among new students, so I have decided to share my story, hoping it would give hope to some people who think it's impossible to change.
What did yoga do to me?
It didn’t make me loose weight; yet, It made me loose harsh self-talk, self-judgment, self-hate, mistrust, low self-esteem, low self-confidence, weak faith & negative perspectives.
Practicing Yoga made me gain more faith, more trust, more confidence, more positivity, and more self-love. It taught me to admire my body, accept my life, respect my limitations, and most importantly surrender to God.
It opened the way for me to understand the idea of acting from the heart, and listen less to the ego..
Yoga practice made me sleep well, eat well, exercise well, observe my actions, realize my emotions and watch my thought flow… It actually taught me a lot about myself.
The difference between the two pictures here is not only the 20 kg difference, it's the difference between 2 women, one who was living through anger, judgments and frustration and who was more busy to slowly kill herself than living her life. A woman who had zero will to work on herself nor change.
The other woman is someone who just started to open up to life, trying to understand more, forgive more and love more. Someone who decided that this is not how she wants to live her life, and this is not how she wants to look like, and this is not how she wants to feel and act. She had the will, so she did it!
I am sharing this picture to send out a message of hope to all the women out there who think that it is too late to change, or it's impossible to transform, or just thinking that you can’t do it because you are not good enough, not strong enough… All those words are just the creation of your mind, it's not reality.
The reality is:
- There is no impossible if you are willing to work hard
- There is no impossible if you do things from the heart
- There is no impossible if you have trust in God and yourself
I urge you to believe in yourself, believe you have all the power in the world, and all the energy you need to get where you want. Just have patience, be determined, and trust in God. Find people who would support you to be a better person and allow them to help you, ignore people who would make you think you can’t do it. Find a role model to look up to.
Finally, don’t miss the enjoyment part, as they say, no one will get out of here alive, so you might as well enjoy every single moment in your journey, live it and love it
200 hrs, 300 hrs, 500 hrs WILL NOT MAKE YOU AN ASHTANGA VINYASA TEACHER
I JUST SHARE WHAT I HAVE LEARNED FROM MY TEACHERS AND WHAT I HAVE BEEN STUDYING.
This post won’t be interesting for non-Ashtanga practitioners, so if you are not, you may skipJJJ
I am writing this today as I was contemplating on this system, the Ashtanga Vinyasa yoga practice, after attending a workshop with David Keil about “the matrix of ashtanga yoga” and how it holds so many layers, so many elements and so many variables.
This system can be perceived as complicated, difficult and sometimes intimidating, yet, the more I practice, the more I read about it, the more I attend workshops and classes with knowledgeable teachers, I realize that it is a blessing to practice it.
Yet I have a confession. I made a mistake, a mistake that was done due to complete ignorance, and this mistake happened when I rushed into teaching as soon as I completed 200 hrs of teacher training course (and I believe teaching Ashtanga just because you attend a 200 hrs ttc or even 300 hr ttc is just a DISASTER). I wasn’t aware back then how deep this practice is, and when I call someone a “YOGA Teacher” or a “Knowledgeable YOGA teacher” I don’t consider them teachers or knowledgeable because they completed 200 hrs of ttc, NO, because they lived this practice on a daily basis, they took their time to unveil the threads of this practice bit by bit, they unlearned things that was barriers to their progress, they were opened and still opened to learn, they seek knowledge from teachers who spent their life time studying and practicing and learning from amazing teachers.
I realized this mistake after a while, and I stopped a bit, and I started to focus more on my practice as a student, my struggle wasn’t only physical, my struggle was always sustaining the focus throughout the 90 min practice, sustaining the quality of the breath, sustaining the drishti or the gazing during the whole practice….all of these things you don’t learn it in a 200/300/500 or 10000000 hr ttc, you learn it by daily practice, you learn it from a good teacher who won’t focus only on your body alignment, but will also tell you that although you can do the postures physically but you don’t have a breath or a bandha for example.
Any gymnastic practitioner will be able to do a perfect split, but will not be able to sustain the vinyasa throughout the practice
I started to share again anything that I have learned from great teachers, yet I still can’t call myself a teacher, I know that I still have a lot to learn and evolve so I have something to give back
In Ashtanga Vinyasa, you can’t earn the title “TEACHER” unless you practice a lot mentally and physically, until you experience a personal transformation so you truly have something to give to your students, other than that, you are only sharing what you have learned.
To all my fellow practitioners, please keep high RESPECT to the title “YOGA TEACHER” It’s a big title, not anyone with a 200 hr certificate deserve it, I am not trying to show disrespect to those who are attending the 200 hrs courses, I am just saying that it is only the beginning, we are not there yet, there is a lot of things we still need to learn and un learn. And the EGO is a good starting point in our learning process to let it go:)
And on another note, most experienced Ashtanga Vinyasa Teachers I have met are not certified 200 or 300 0r x00 hrs, they are either authorized teachers or they are experienced practitioners, who put their heart and time in learning all the details and practice daily for years, and in my opinion, those are best teachers, they are my favorite kind of teachers, those are the ones who are honoring the practice and respecting their teachers.
Crystal healer, pranic healer, reiki healer, energy healer...
Do you really believe that someone...a human being can actually heal another person?
there is no such thing as HEALERS, there is only one healer i know, the most powerful one... GOD.
Then what is the role of those who call themselves "Healers"?
They are people who studied and learned tools and practices that can help them in their healing and development journey. Those practitioners had gone through transformational experiences due to those practices, and they have something to share with other people who are taking the same path and seeking support in their healing journey. They are only there to support, to offer a helping hand. Claiming they can heal is claiming a divine role.
God takes u through ur healing process step by step, clearing things for u and teaching u the lesson u need. putting people on your way to help you in your journey.
You are the one who start the healing process with ur will to work on yourself.
THERE IS NO HEALER BUT GOD