Monday, March 2, 2015

From then to Now... The Beginnings

          Seeing as though the only blog I have had is solely on my website, I have decided to start my own personal blog where I can add more personal thoughts and travels through my journey as a personal trainer and yoga instructor into the business world of entrepreneurs as I learn to run my own business., and handle being a single teen mom turning into a women, mother, and hopefully one day a wife. I figure I should start with my journey into all of this since this is more of a personal blog and it is supposed to be about me. Please understand that although what I am going to write, although many of my close friends know this is not something I have publicly made known to the world yet, and although I have come to terms with the things here I just haven't had the experience of sharing it with the world, and I would like to start now. My childhood is something I am only just coming to terms with as of about a year ago. One year ago I was a dying heroin addict with no path in life, no self worth, and no love for my life or anyone else’s. My ability to live a normal life in society was gone, and I was what you could consider the scum of the earth. October of last year is when I decided to finally go to rehab, get my life together, and clean up my act. I went to rehab and came out with a determined attitude to stay clean. The first thing I did was join a 12 step fellowship who made it clear that the point of their steps was to be able to function in society as anyone else would. The thing that stuck out to me was that in order for me to function in a society of non-addicts, I would have to do things the way non-addicts did them. Learning to cope with problems in ways that weren’t just for addicts. This meant that using the guidelines and steps established in the fellowship were not going to work for others. I had to figure out what normal people did when they would get stressed or irritated. I needed to figure out how to live. My first thought came from a realization I had had from a few years before; to meditate. I vowed to learn how since I hadn’t given it a chance really when I was younger. I joined a yoga school for a meditations course and took a few classes based on how to improve your meditations. When I was done with those classes I dove into making daily meditations a part of my everyday life. I realized quickly though that there were some days that I could just not sit still that long, but I still wanted to get a meditation in, and so I decided to incorporate some of the simple yoga flows I had learned to help keep my body moving rhythmically while meditating. I would do sun salutations for hours because they were simple and mindless and gave me the ability to move while in deep thought. As this progressed I decided to start looking into more poses and flows, and I became borderline obsessed with finding new ways to push my body and mind to the limit.


I did 7 months of deep soul searching to find out who I was, and what I was both good at and bad at; what I liked and disliked, and what my strengths and weaknesses were. In learning about myself I can honestly say, I did not really have too many spiritual experiences as a child; in fact I cannot think of any. I grew up in what you could consider a traditionally European household thrown in the middle of lower middle class America. I did my best to fit in with other children, but never really could. I had a taste for trying new things and being different and reckless. I started down a dark path that began with drinking and many arrests and complete destruction of my life and all those that I came into contact with. I was sent out to Arizona to finish high school in a reform school where I discovered a few things. First I discovered that drinking wasn't really my thing. Second I discovered that meditating was something I enjoyed, and could change my life. The last thing I discovered was unfortunately the thing that did change my life; which was heroin. I came back at least with this newfound love that was destroying me, and spiraled downward into an inescapable horror of addiction. I met a guy who I thought was going to save me, but little did I know that I was the only one who could really save me. I leaned on him as a savior, and although it was a deeply destructive, and abusive relationship, I still clung to him, for I was now only 18 and pregnant. He was 27 and in my mind meant he must have had things under control  but he did not. He was as lost as I was in his addiction and in no position to help me out. I finally got a hold of myself when my daughter was about 7 months old, and got away from the situation, but I was just as lost and afraid as I had been before, and now I had a child to raise on my own. I took a job bar tending and slowly began to try to get my life together financially. After two years of isolation and hard work, I finally took the last step, and went to rehab.

As I started with the fellowship and with my meditations, I slowly began to change for the better. My roommates were the first to see the change. They used to say I wasn’t being myself. My instinct to fight first and put up defenses were slowly breaking down.  I was no longer jumping the gun, or picking a fight for no reason. I was calm and reserved and more of a thinker. As they pointed these things out I started looking for these flaws in my personality and realized that they had really become obsolete in my life. This realization that not only was I becoming the real me, but that this person was a kind, loving, and genuine person felt great. My yoga practice increased to being done everyday for multiple hours a day, watching YouTube tutorials and DVD’s I had borrowed from friends. I started a daily practice in July when I started doing some social media “challenges” which allowed me to learn new poses and forced me to practice everyday to get the pose of the day. I started working for a Crossfit gym in January of 2014 and learned about how both Crossfit and yoga can and should coincide as an excellent way to stay healthy and in shape. I worked here learning the ins and outs of the business world, and how to run a gym. In August I went through a way over due keen surgery to fix my acl and meniscus, and I was no longer able to do Crossfit to the same extent I had before. Not only was my Crossfit routines altered, but I had to revert to lots of simplistic poses and flows. I used yoga to coax my leg back into finding its stability and ability to bend again.

Up until last month I having been keeping up with at least an hour of yoga a day and one hour of meditations, but I started realizing that my practice could use some tweaking and additional coaching. So I started searching for yoga studios that I enjoyed going to. I started working at a new studio and was able to take classes everyday. As I continued my search I also began to realize, through my meditations, that I really wanted to give the amazing experience I had gotten through yoga to others. I want so desperately to be able to reach out to young girls who have gone through some of the same experiences that I had and help them find the beauty in life. I thought though that I could not do this since I had a 12 step fellowships guidelines, and meditations, and decided that this would not work for everyone. Some people never had a drug or alcohol problem, and some may just be turned away as soon as they heard that I was using a 12-step process. The solution I decided upon was to get my yoga teacher certification and teach others how to meditate and do yoga in order to find the peace and happiness I know is in all of us. 

            The company I have started is called BeYou-T-Fit, and its purpose is to teach people how to find the value in themselves. I am so grateful to those who helped me find myself and learn to love that person that I want to pay it back. It is not enough though for me to just help them though there are people everywhere who suffer from thoughts of inability and low self worth. I want to help show everyone that they are truly unique and special, and that these qualities are not only awesome and beautiful, but are highly valued by many. I am just starting with personal training since that is the only certification that I have, however the entire company is based on feeling good through mind, body, and spirit. For many people it is easier to understand the physical; what they can see. So I try to get people being active and exercising, as everyone starts feeling better about how they look and their self esteem raises then I start getting them involved in meditations and group discussions. At this point in the process I encourage many people to seek outside help, since I do not have a degree in psychology. I would like to help people tap into some deep rooted emotions and feelings, and help them get through difficult times, and start to see themselves with all of their worth, however I can only help to a certain degree. After I get the mind and body right then we focus on the fact that your spirit has changed and that individuals have more self worth and a higher self-esteem. I will be offering personal training, yoga, yogance, group discussions, guided meditations, and self esteem workshops. I also plan on doing some motivational speaking at local high schools to help promote both good vibes and my company. 

           So this here is my back ground story, and I know I will probably get a lot of hate or judgements for this, but it is important to me that this story gets heard.

1 comment:

  1. "Rock bottom became the solid foundation upon which I rebuilt my life." J. K. Rowling

    Congrats on everything, good stuff

    ReplyDelete