how the practice grows with you

(on all the shit life throws at you, and the yoga that somehow sticks around anyway)

The first yoga studio I ever practiced in was a wooden shala built on top of a hill. Nataraja. Hand-built by the yogis who lived on the property, forty minutes west of Coolum Beach, tucked far enough into the bush that your phone lost reception long before you pulled into the driveway.

I didn’t know it then, but this place would plant the seed for how I understand yoga now. Not as something you do, but as something that quietly meets you at every stage of your life. A guide for staying in good company with yourself.

At twenty, I found the rules a bit odd. No tight clothing, no singlets, no perfume. My friend just nudged me and said, “Trust me, this place is amazing.” And she was right.

We’d walk the wooden path to the verandah, greeted by Skye, the hairy German shepherd who insisted on giving everyone three licks on the hand. Incense drifted through the morning air. Inside, a photo of Paramahansa Yogananda sat on the altar, framed by candles and fresh flowers.

(entry to the Natajara shala at dawn)

Practice there was long. Two hours on a Saturday morning, half of it meditation.
I was blown away. During those 18 months of practicing at Nataraja, I had my first glimpses of something I couldn’t quite name then - samadhi or something like it. A sense of dissolving into something vast and peaceful. Sometimes I’d close my eyes and feel weightless; other times I’d watch the birds glide through the valley and imagine what it might be like to clock off from human life and just… fly with them for a bit.

Afterwards, my friends and I would go to a waterfall around the corner from the shala and lay like lizards in the sun. We didn’t speak much. Just the hum of the cicadas in the bush and that feeling like we’re a part of that too.

Then, life flung me somewhere entirely different.

I became a paramedic in the busy Brisbane. Four years of 14-hour shifts, adrenaline, sirens, coffee, and functioning off minimal sleep. I thought I’d lost my practice. I didn’t step foot in a studio during that time. But looking back, I realise it never left - yoga is sneaky like that. It shape-shifts. It hides in plain sight.

My practice then was lying on the floor, spine to ground, catching my breath after a long day. It was noticing when something didn’t feel right in my body. It was listening closely enough to that tiny whisper: This isn’t it, and then somehow scraping together the courage to honour it. Even when my whole insides screamed, “Are you sure, girl?!”

So, I quit my job and moved to Melbourne. Then the world shut down. COVID came knocking. “Surprise bitch, character development!”

My mat lived on the back deck beside my veggie garden, and most days I lowered myself onto it feeling like a stranger in my own body. Burnt-out. Disconnected. Tender in all the places I’d numbed.

Some days my practice was movement, just enough to get me out of my head for a little while. Other days my practice was long, salty sobs, the rattan mat absorbing everything I’d been refusing to feel. My practice was a private, solitary thing then. Messy. Feral. Holy. I’m blessed my neighbours at the time were small, elderly Italian folk who couldn’t look over the fence because there was nothing pretty about it at all.

When the lockdowns lifted and I started feeling more like myself again, I craved people. A space where I didn’t have to be anything except honest. I found a little suburban studio in Reservoir on the northern suburbs of Melbourne. Nothing flashy. A real down-to-earth joint.

Practicing with others again was comforting. The unspoken understanding that even if we didn’t know each other’s names, we were in it together for that hour. After being alone for so long, that quiet shared humanity felt like medicine.

(Oshun Yoga Studio - Reservoir)

Geelong became the place where everything shifted again. Where I walked into a studio that didn’t just welcome me. It showed me who I could become. The place where my practice grew legs and a voice. The place where practice stopped being just mine and started becoming something I could share.

And now, nearly one year into teaching, it absolutely knocks the wind out of me at times. The fact that people show up, roll their mats out, and trust me to guide them for an hour? Wild. Sacred. Humbling. There are moments during a class where I feel this warm rush in my chest like, holy shit, I get to do this. It fills my heart with so much joy I sometimes feel like a fizzy drink that’s about to overflow.

(Good Folk Yoga - the studio I teach at - on a beautiful late afternoon)

Each season of my life had its own dialect of practice. Its own way of getting my attention:

At Nataraja, it spoke in awe and mystery.
As a paramedic, it whispered in survival. A small flame in the dark.
On my Melbourne back deck, it spoke through unravelling, through tears and truth back to myself.
In the Reservoir studio, it returned as re-opening - a feeling of being held again, shared with community.
And in Geelong, it speaks as purpose. As voice, as witnessing, as holding space.

Practice, to me, is the ongoing conversation between who I think I am and who I actually am. And like any long, honest relationship, the practice continues to grow as I grow - meeting me again and again exactly where I am, asking gently:

Who are you now?

Who are you becoming?

And what do you need?

As always, thank you for reading folks.
Happy gardening,
Evie xo