A Yoga Story: Connecting to the Past
For the past two years now I have been practicing yoga and for the past year I have been in Yoga Teacher Training. For a few years prior, I had practiced on and off, but as you can probably tell, yoga has become a huge part of my life. So what happened a few weekends ago, as you can imagine as you read along, opened a whole new way of thinking for me on why I started practicing yoga.
My mother’s brother, my Uncle Alan, passed away when he was 19 in a car accident. I never met him, since she was sixteen when he passed, but I had always heard stories about him growing up and my brother was named after him, so my uncle always felt present to me. There have been some parallels between him and I, like the fact that I was born on his birthday, we both had an interest in psychology and how people operate, and both of us were empathetic to what others go through.
A few weeks ago, I went home to visit my parents and my mother told me that my uncle used to practice yoga regularly before he passed away. She and my grandmother were not sure how they had forgotten this since it has been about 2 years since I started practicing, but it was in the 70’s that he practiced. They talked to me about how he used to be very diligent about going to a yoga class and very interested in the practice. My world changed in that moment because I never would have thought that he practiced yoga and all of a sudden there was this new connection and bond to my uncle through yoga.
They also let me know that he kept a notebook of the yoga poses that he learned in class so that he could practice them at home and that they still had the notebook in his chest of belongings in the basement. We went down cellar and first found a calendar where he had marked off the dates that he would go to class. We then found the little notebook with the pen still in the spiral (I also found out that I get my pen hoarding trait from him as well) and it was a moment I can’t describe. In the little notebook he had the sequence of poses he practiced in class that day and that he had taken a beginner class and started a beginner II class.

But in the back was something I was not expecting — his teachers’ names. I looked them up and was able to find out that one of his teacher’s is a wildlife and landscape photographer in the New England area and he had an email listed. I was able to reach out to him, and though he did not recognize my uncle’s name, he asked for pictures to see if he would recognize him. After I sent them he responded back saying that he recognized Uncle Alan right away and that he was a beautiful and gentle soul who could also be serious, especially when looking inward. The other teacher I was not able to find contact information for, but I will try again.
This experience and new knowledge has changed my love for the practice. Now when I am practicing yoga, it is not just a chance to connect with myself, but also my uncle. I can understand the enjoyment that he got out of practice and it gives me more motivation to be a better yoga teacher. It left me with the question of if he were around today, would he have become a teacher? Would I have gotten into yoga sooner? Would he be practicing alongside me?
I do believe that yoga can bring people closer together and this has certainly given me the proof I needed. Yoga has brought me closer to my uncle and closer to feeling that relationship with him. Whenever I think about this story, it amazes me and how out of blue it was. He practiced in 1975 and I began my consistent practice in 2015. Our practices are 40 years apart, but I have never felt so close to him as I do now.
