To Yoke

To yoke, or to unite; with this being the translation for the word Yoga it would make perfect sense as to why so many people are attracted to it.  I myself was drawn in by my practice after a short period of time as I began to feel more like I belonged to the world, like I had my own place here.

After 7 years of inconsistent practice I decided to step up and do a teacher training so that I could lead others into the deeper realm of yoga, so that I could maybe help others see the incredible possibilities that I had experienced with yoga.  I stepped behind the doors of what yoga looked like and discovered that the world of yoga is very similar to a world without yoga.  Sometimes it is petty, it hoards and has greed, it has its lies and it has it downfalls and drama; but mainly because we are all human and this is part of our psyche… yoga just offers us a gateway to begin to see these patterns so that we can shift to a higher activation of self, yoga helps us to be aware of the “humanness”.

My name is Adriane Ehmann and I began yoga at 18 years old when I was modeling and they expressed that yoga would help me to lose weight.  Lose weight!!!  I was on it, I practiced 1 hour a day 7 days a week determined to lose weight…. And found so much more.  At the time, and as young as I was, I was  involved in an abusive relationship.  I smoked a pack of cigarettes a day and drank heavily 3 to 4 times per week.  The results crept up on me and I am unsure of how long it took before I had the full realization….

But one day I woke up and noticed that I didn’t smoke first thing, and then I noticed that when my partner was mean I just let it go and was able to relieve it through a steady breath, and then I didn’t want to go drinking…. These things, these habits begin to decrease in strength and before I knew it I barely smoked, and if I drank it was a single glass of wine, I was calmer and the fear of returning home was less and less because somewhere deep inside me I knew that this relationship did not define me.  I lost weight for sure too, but I mainly contribute that to the 12 diet pills that I took a day.  Then one day I got the phone call of a lifetime and was invited by Elite Model Management of Milan Italy to come out and model for them.  It was exactly what I had been working for and with the exit from the Unites States my yoga practice ceased to exist.

The relationship naturally ended when I returned from Italy, and I fell into a heavy drinking stage upon where I was drunk pretty much 70% – 80% of the time for 6 months.  There was no time for yoga as I wallowed away in the “failure” or modeling and the “failure” of a relationship.  I fell into many destructive habits at this point in life; the drinking soon led me to cocaine; which ultimately led me to another 6 month binge of being coked out probably 75% of the time.  It was my priority to be disconnected and nothing was going to change that….. After a night of partying, (skipping the details), I should have been dead, but for some reason I survived.  I was up for 4 days with the shakes and anxiety like no ones business and with the help of dear friends I made the decision to step out of my self destruction.  My roommates encouraged me to start going to the gym, where I took a yoga class within those first couple of sober days; that class helped me to begin my own home practice with the videos of Suzanne Deason and Rodney Yee.  Yoga again became a nightly ritual and with how extensive I was diving into drugs and alcohol, where I should have experienced withdrawl, I experienced peace.  This I attribute to the practice of yoga, as it is the only thing that I had seen such incredible results with before. 

I practiced yoga for another 5 or 6 years on and off at home with the comfort of my videos that had nurtured me through so much torment.  I stayed clean from drugs and would find myself making better decisions when I would practice, a feeling of wholeness was there when my practice was consistent.  In this time I took one guided yoga class session through the Recreator in which I cried for hours after each practice.  And after the 7 years of hiding at home I joined a place that was both a gym and a studio.  At this point I practiced once a week and even taught a few classes a week at another place where I had been trained to do a specific sequence.  I was happy, but I also wanted to get certified so I pursued it and went from practicing once a week to 7 days a week for months and months.

I have been a certified instructor for over a year now and I love it.  I have taught consistently and practiced inconsistently at times and regularly at other times.  But my dedication has always just been there.  I find myself always committed to yoga and try to revisit what my journey has been often, as the practice is something that I can always revisit and go to when I need comfort and exploration.  It helps me to tap into myself at a level that may remain untouched otherwise.  I create an opportunity to listen to my body and witness my breath as they dance together in perfect creation of the divine.  When I come to my mat I find a sense of compassion for myself and for those around me; I am able to take accountability for my life and see what I am happy with and what I would like to do better at. 

Yoga, to me, is school, it is consistently around to teach me about the world and to link me to those that are far and near.  It has changed my diet from heavy emotional foods to vegetarian and raw.  It has led me into deeper practices such as meditation and breath work, unlocking unknown memories and motivations.  I would call it a form of religion I use it to connect to that I remained ignorant from for many years of my life. 

Article Published 2010, Yoga Connection Magazine