THE TWO THINGS YOU NEED TO START A PERSONAL REVOLUTION
Just like any other middle schooler, my friends and I would have slumber parties We would eat cookie dough, watch movies until the early hours of the morning, and, most importantly, gossip. The more gossip you knew, the better. Who went broke? Who gained 20 pounds since last year? Whose style is hideous? I felt like it was a competition to see how negative each of us in my “friend” group could be, and I was tired of labeling everyone else as “bad” or “not good enough.”
Having attended all-girls school for ten years, I have dealt with my fair share of gossip, fakeness, lies, backstabbing, and focusing on our imperfections. It made me feel insecure, and supported my belief that people are inherently bad. Practicing negativity made me feel as though I was not good enough for anyone, anything, or even myself. I used to pick at every little negative thing in my life, complaining to myself and others about a self-concocted “negativity” until I moved onto the next one. By the time I was thirteen, I was sick and tired of constantly, intentionally focusing in on what I wish was different in my life, so I chose to actively to take in the good in my life. This decision to choose to see everything in life in a positive light was the beginning of my journey into the art of yoga sculpt.
Yoga sculpt is an extremely intense total body workout, in which yogis sculpt their bodies in “pack” formation through plyometrics, cardio, yoga, and weight-lifting all in one hour. It is most preferably practiced at 98 degrees Fahrenheit with less than 30% humidity. At the end of the day, however, yoga sculpt is a true vinyasa yoga class – the real workout comes from listening to your body and taking care of yourself. Yoga sculpt, in essence, has changed my entire being. It has brought to my life a natural sense of positivity, gratefulness, happiness, and love. Yoga sculpt shows me the obstacles that are in my way. The positive aspects of life are infinite. And thanks to my yoga sculpt practice I now see that. It has shown me a sense of well-being, strength, self-awareness, feeling more in-tune with my body, and just generally having a higher self-esteem.
After my first yoga sculpt class, I was frustrated, sore, and reluctant to return. It was my mother who encouraged me to continue to press onward with my desire to live a more positive lifestyle, and she knew that I felt that yoga sculpt would be the core of such a lifestyle, along with eating healthy, sleeping well, and surrounding myself with likeminded positive people. It is her, as well as the many friends—who I now consider family—that I have made through belonging to such a tight-knit yoga sculpt community, who push me onward daily. Ridding myself of all the toxins built up of negativity, junk food, late nights, and overanalyzing everything truly changed my life.
UCLA graduate and San Francisco psychologist Dr. Rick Hanson studies and has written several scientific novels on recent scientific breakthroughs that have revealed that what we think and feel changes the brain. His book Hardwiring Happiness shows how to transform simple positive experiences of daily life into neural structures that promote lasting health, happiness, love, and inner peace. It promotes beating the brain’s negativity bias, which, as he describes, is like Velcro for negative experiences but Teflon for positive ones. Using this idea, I sought to turn my experiences into lasting inner strengths, like balance, resilience, and positivity, built in the brain. I have found that my everyday experience becomes a collection of extraordinary interactions with the people and world around me, rather than a tiresome tread. Yoga sculpt plays a huge role in maintaining this positive mindset. The flow of vinyasa and the repetitive motions of the weight movements reiterate the intention we set at the beginning of each class.
Yoga sculpt originally enticed me not because of how good everyone who teaches it or attends the classes a lot looks, but because of the inherent fun and joy it carries. As I practiced more and more, I became adept at the various poses and positions and even challenged myself by increasing the difficulty of certain poses. At first, I couldn’t do low plank into upward facing dog, an integral transitional part of the vinyasa flow in yoga sculpt. Through honing in on the transition, and, after mastering the movements, challenging myself to do it one-legged, I proved to myself that I can do anything I put my mind to. Ultimately, on my eighteenth birthday, I decided that I wanted to become a certified yoga sculpt instructor. I knew the path would be a difficult but incredibly rewarding one.
Teacher training involved a lot of long hours, and it was originally very hard to relate to the other trainees, as I was the youngest one in the group by many years. Older teacher trainees would talk about how they weren’t as flexible as they used to be, what their full-time jobs were like, and their kids’ schedules. Not to say that we didn’t have things in common, like a shared love to cook clean foods, for example, but, at the beginning, it was definitely challenging to find much in common with strangers who I rarely saw in class, as many of my peers were from different CorePower locations. Eventually, though, yoga sculpt brought us together through the energy of positivity, and suddenly our age gap did not matter.
I decided to try my hardest, put my best foot forward, always be positive no matter what and, most importantly, trust in the universe. Upon completing the intense physical and emotional four-month journey of yoga sculpt teacher training, I looked around the graduation celebration and realized that I had made some of my closest friends through choosing to take this path. I still keep in touch with these friends, who are now fellow instructors, and my mentors, who have been instructors long before me, and share with them my accomplishments, failures, and daily victories.
Graduating yoga sculpt teacher training as the youngest yoga sculpt instructor was a reward within itself. I believe that I bring a fresh, new perspective to the community and that my having an “old soul” brings me to the level of life experience and overcoming hardships as those instructors who are often decades older than I am. Being happy with my life, who I am, and my blessings are direct benefits of my deciding to not give up on yoga sculpt at age thirteen. They are direct benefits of my choosing to practice. They are direct benefits of my setting off on the path to become a yoga sculpt instructor.
My goal is to spread joy, love, happiness, and positivity into everyone’s lives around me. I am currently the first freshman ever to teach workout classes at the University of Southern California, and I actually started the yoga sculpt program here at USC, as well as am the youngest member of both the Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles CorePower Yoga teams. I feel blessed and honored to be able to represent the unique opinions and viewpoints of my generation in these loving, caring, and completely accepting communities.
The two things you need to start a personal revolution are a positive mindset and good energy. It’s all about the connection of mind, body, and spirit. My life is now a daily celebration. Choosing to view my life as a glass half full and having a positive point of view revolutionized my life. Allow it to revolutionize yours, too.
XO,
ARW
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