Umbereen Mustafa
“I started my regular practice with breathe, but I was practicing in the winter months basically as a competitive rower. I would be outside when it was warm and I would come inside when it was cold, and this was when I would dedicate myself to yoga for 5 months. About 3 years ago I ran into a couple of tough patches in my life. My dad got seriously hurt, spent 3 months in the hospital, and it was a period of incredible introspection. When I came back to breathe I said this is it. For me, this becomes religion. Tuesdays and Friday mornings are going to be untouchable. Somebody will get the kids on the bus, and the world stops for that hour and fifteen minutes. I did it for a year and my practice changed, my life changed, it touched me in ways that I needed, and I found a lot spiritually and emotionally -- a lot of peace when I was in yoga at breathe.
I started trying crazy things. I started getting upside-down, and I’m addicted to upside-down. I really am. I used to say my life was upside-down, and then I realized upside-down is actually a beautiful thing. My life is chaos, and that’s not always a beautiful thing, but upside-down is beautiful. For a year all I wanted to do was be upside down everywhere I went. Outside, inside, and then it moved into the more challenging poses.
The idea that yoga is about flexibility is so wrong. It’s about control and strength and I rarely feel like I have control in my life because of how many things are naturally in there with three kids and two full time jobs -- also I do a lot of volunteer work because I’m an over-committer – and so, how you get control, and how you focus on just one thing at a time is what yoga gives me. I’m still not good at taking it off the mat effectively, but the same way it took me years to get comfortable with crow and that someone kept saying it and then I eventually did it and now crow is so easy, is a metaphor for life. I was terrified to do it, and then I did it, and then where do you go next?
I think about some of the poses we do and I think about how to be slower and find balance and that’s what I take off the mat. If I can really start every day saying, ‘How can I get through this day and feel like I was balanced?’ And part of it is just showing up. Part of it is just making sure I don’t compromise my yoga time ever. I have three kids, two puppies, and I felt like everything was pushing my buttons, but when I can stop and say, ‘It’s not what you’re doing to me, it’s what can I do to calm myself in the midst of all the chaos?’ And that’s what I take off the mat right now. It’s going to take a long time for me to change my personality which is overachieve, overdrive, go too fast without thinking, to slowing down, thinking before opening my mouth. Doing lion’s breath in the bathroom! I’ll do it with my kids sometimes because I don’t get ridiculous enough, and that’s just a ridiculous way to ease tension.
Yogis already know the magic of yoga. The beauty of yoga for me I believe is very different than what people expect from yoga if you’re not already a yogi. The stereotype of you have to be flexible to take yoga, that it’s about stretching, it’s quiet and calm -- there are days where the music gets cranked and somebody talks or some of the Sunday morning jam-packed classes in Webster we get silly and giggle – there’s a freedom about yoga that I think we all need to give ourselves permission to practice and there’s a humanity about it.
I love, by the way, I love, love, love, that meditation is included in Living Yoga because it creates an accessibility. In 40 Days we started talking about meditation and somebody said, ‘I had to cough and I didn’t want to cough and wreck everybody else’s space.’ But we’re all human, we’re all personal, and I think the more you force anything, whether it’s quiet or speed, or whatever, you’re ruining what yoga can be. Because at the end of the day yoga is about the people and what we all bring to each other in this community. And that’s what I love about breathe -- that it’s a community of multiple locations, multiple instructors, multiple programs, no matter who you are you’ll find something at breathe or you’ll find someone to unlock what you need. Give yourself permission as a yogi to just be human and get what you need out of it day by day.”