Five years have passed since yoga first appeared, at a sports gym, in May 2007. The encounter was genuinely a matter of chance.
Exercise, done regularly, matters. That conviction led through a number of attempts before arriving at yoga. Looking back, what stands out is how long the first step took.
Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People came into view in 1998. The importance of exercise registered then, along with a sense that something had to be done about it. Even so, the step into regular training did not follow. There were stretches of training at gyms such as OASIS in Musashi-Kosugi, but the habit never took hold.
Around 2005 came a different thought: doing this seriously would mean paying for it and working with a good trainer. Training began at Total Workout in Shibuya, two or three times a week — a deliberate investment in the body, made on the judgment that spending money would sustain the practice.
It continued for close to three years. The way food appeared changed as well, and results came into view. The habit had taken hold, which was worth something. Yet stiffness in the shoulders, pain in the lower back, and a general rigidity emerged, and something about it did not sit right.
Around that time, the gym announced that an instructor from IYC would begin teaching Ashtanga yoga. April 2007, as near as memory serves. Interest in yoga and Pilates had been there for a while, drawn by the stiff shoulders and the back pain, but the occasion had never arrived.
The lineage did not particularly matter, so a few of the classes went by. Posture, and the application and release of effort, opened into a new way of seeing — the shock of it stays vivid. What distinguishes this lineage is that the postures are strong and their order is fixed, so once the sequence is learned, the practice sustains itself.
Weekly Ashtanga practice continued until the Total Workout membership ended in late 2007. The reason for leaving: the trainer went independent, founded a private gym, and practice moved there.
In 2008 there was a period of weekly Ashtanga practice at TIPNESS ONE Hibiya, but the desire for more grew. Around then came word of the Mysore method — daily self-directed practice, with the teacher adjusting where adjustment is needed. If the postures themselves could be learned, practice would no longer depend on attending class.
Wanting at least three sessions a week, a search for “Mysore” and “Ashtanga yoga” turned up Mysore Tokyo at the top of the results, and practice has continued there ever since. That was April 2008, so four years have passed, nearly all of them with daily practice. Where the routine once held both strength training and yoga, it is now yoga alone.
Looking back this way, the question presses: why did the first step take so long? Trying various things is what eventually led to yoga. An unforeseen coincidence brought it about — which suggests that what one takes up first is not necessarily what suits. And when something turns out not to suit, there may be something equally important in the willingness to let one’s own idea go.
Exercise matters. This habit is worth keeping.