I used to think yoga meant touching your toes.
Hold that thought, because I want to tell you about the day I stopped believing that.
I was sitting in a folding chair — not a yoga mat, not a studio, just a chair in a room — with a woman I’ll call Maya. Nobody had sent her. No doctor had cleared her, no one had told her it was time. She came to me and chose it herself: “I’m ready to get back to moving again, one step at a time.” So we started small. Shoulders up, shoulders down. Reach one arm to the sky. Breathe.
From the Inside Out
I wasn’t sitting outside, watching Maya from a distance. I was right there with her, doing the poses myself — not most of them perfectly, some of them not at all — because I know what it is to work from inside a body that doesn’t always cooperate. I don’t teach from the outside looking in. I move from the inside looking out. And that’s exactly how I honor Maya — not as someone I’m observing from the outside, but as someone looking from the inside out, same as me.
By the end, she wasn’t sweating. She wasn’t sore. But she was smiling in a way I hadn’t seen her smile yet that day.
Here’s what I’ve come to understand about Maya since that day:
- She’s teaching me that choosing yourself isn’t a one-time decision
- It’s something she has to choose, every single time she shows up
- On the days she does, something in her lifts
- On the days she doesn’t, I can see it — quiet, low, weighed down by whatever she talked herself out of
This Isn’t Really About The Chair
This isn’t really about the chair, or even about Maya. It’s about you.
What does it cost you on the days you don’t choose yourself — and what shifts on the days you do?
So tell me: what’s one small movement you could offer your body this week, just to say hello to it again — because you chose it, not because someone else did?
Much joy,
Tawnja
(Maya’s name has been changed to protect her privacy.)