5 Years and a Half of Yoga: A Journey of Perfect Attendance

Today marks 5 years, 6 months, and 2 days since I started yoga. 5 years and a half. 66 months. And 2 days. If I were to give myself a reward for this not-so-long or short period of time, it would be a perfect attendance award.

I think I was a bit far from perfect attendance award when I was young. In elementary school, I had a bit of a sickness, so I think I didn’t receive a perfect attendance award, let alone a regular attendance award, until I was in the 5th or 6th grade. I remember receiving a regular attendance award in middle and high school… In college, I skipped class so much in my 1st and 2nd year that it was a miracle I didn’t receive an academic warning?

I remember that I started living a life worthy of a perfect attendance award when I was a senior in college. It was after I decided what I wanted to do with my life.

Originally, I am the type of person who gets absorbed in something when I get hooked on it. Now that I think about it, there is no one who doesn’t do that. Since the word ‘get hooked’ has the inherent meaning of ‘immersion’… it is a sentence that is like the same thing. Perhaps a more appropriate question would be whether you have ever had the luck or will to find or meet something you are ‘engaged in’ while living your life.

I have had many experiences of being ‘hooked’ in my life. I had two or three terrible (perhaps foolish) unrequited loves when I was young, and fortunately I got hooked on physics early on, and I have been immersed in Ashtanga yoga for the past five and a half years.

In any field, after years of continuous effort, when you reach a certain level, you seem to gain confidence, composure, or self-esteem. In that society, recognition from others is recognition, but it is also a sense of surprise or pride that you have blossomed a small potential within yourself into a huge flower through hard work.

However, this is not a great achievement. Even after five and a half years, I still can’t even imitate Karandavasana from the intermediate series. However, since I can grab my heels with both hands in Kapotasana, I can say that I have overcome the beginner level.

This is the result of perfect attendance in yoga practice. It is indeed ‘99% practice, 1% talent’. Or as Woody Allen put it: ‘Ninety nine percent of success in life is just showing up.’