I started practicing yoga in 2013. I practiced fairly regularly until 2017—and that was the year I decided to get my yoga teaching certification.
I spent three months in a somewhat intensive program through the studio where I practiced. After that, I auditioned to be a teacher and spent the next two years teaching yoga. I like to say that yoga saved me during my first divorce.
I had built an incredible community of like-minded people—people who supported me, held me, and lifted me up during the crash. I found comfort on my mat. I learned how to hold space for myself and for others at the same time, which was no small feat considering my world, as I knew it, was falling apart.
Yoga was my one constant.
There was something oddly comforting about heated yoga. I could cry freely and tell myself the tears were just sweat from a vigorous practice. Eventually, though, I stopped hiding them. I let the tears come.
I taught classes that were deeply personal to me and was met, time and time again, by students who stayed after class to share their own stories—things that had surfaced for them on their mats.
In those moments, I felt seen, heard, understood, and supported—all in one breath.
Then I uprooted my life. In more ways than one.
I met a man who would briefly become my second husband—a man who would go on to dismantle my life as I knew it. He started practicing yoga, and soon it became our thing. It was no longer my space. It belonged to “us.”
At the time, I thought it was beautiful. A man who loved yoga as much as I did? Incredible.
In hindsight, Matt was a master manipulator. He infiltrated every part of my life, mirroring my interests so perfectly that it felt like compatibility, when in reality it was control. Slowly, without realizing it, I lost my safe space.
If he was too tired to go to yoga, I was too tired to go.
If he wanted to take a class with an instructor I didn’t enjoy, I just wouldn’t practice.
If he was in my class, I was distracted—and I knew my students weren’t getting what they once had.
And then we moved. A new state. Hundreds of miles away from the friends who truly understood who I was becoming. We called it a mutual decision, though in truth, it was probably more mine than his.
But this story isn’t about him.
It’s about leaving community—and convincing myself that when I arrived in this new city, I didn’t need one anymore. I had Matt. And once again, I was doing what I had done before: losing myself in someone else because I didn’t yet understand that two people can exist together without collapsing into one.
I taught one yoga class in Austin before deciding, almost immediately, that these people “weren’t my people.”
Starting at a studio where you’ve never practiced—where you don’t know anyone, where you’re just the new teacher—is hard. Especially when you’re already unraveling. The energy felt off. And if I’m honest, I was probably bringing that energy with me.
That was the moment I truly lost my yoga practice.
Then COVID hit. Studios closed. I took a few Zoom classes—partly to support instructors I loved, partly to convince myself I was still a “yogi.” But the truth was, the peace, the love, the light I once felt on my mat had all but disappeared.
Then I separated from Matt.
I don’t say we separated—because if it were up to him, we’d still be together in whatever form suited him at the time.
I wanted to come back to yoga. I really did. But something stopped me. For years.
I no longer felt at home in my own body. I didn’t feel gratitude, and I believed showing up on my mat without it would be dishonest—like I’d be faking something sacred. I didn’t trust myself enough to know what I needed. I didn’t have the community I once did. And even if I had, I would have been too embarrassed—going through yet another divorce, less than two years later.
Yoga during my first divorce helped me feel.
Yoga during my second divorce felt traumatic.
So I folded up my mat and shoved it in the closet.
I knew—deep down—that getting back on my mat would be one of many tools that could help me process what I’d been through. But for reasons I’m still uncovering, I couldn’t do it.
And that became the story for the next five years.
Even after I crawled my way out of that trauma, I told myself yoga belonged to an old version of me. That I was reborn. That maybe yoga didn’t fit anymore.
I turned to strength training. Weight lifting. Circuit training. And my mat stayed tucked away.
But I loved yoga.
I loved breath and movement syncing into one.
I loved holding space.
I loved the quiet, nonverbal connection that happens in a room full of people breathing together.
So when I decided to begin my travels in Guatemala, I opened myself up to volunteering as a yoga teacher.
An opportunity landed in my lap in Antigua. I taught several classes—for the first time in nearly six years.
Then I came to Lago Atitlán.
This place is essentially one big yoga shala.
I’ve started taking classes again. Practicing on my own. Teaching again—reminding myself that I still can. This town is transient, and I don’t know if I’ll find the kind of rooted community I once had. But I’m trying.
I’m allowing memories to surface when I hold a posture a little longer than usual. I’m letting my breath guide me. I’m letting the tears come when they want to.
And I’m remembering—slowly, gently—how good it feels to be back on my mat.
-A
One Life One Encounter 
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