MEET YANA
Hi, I am Yana.
I am a recovering litigation lawyer. In 2015 as I deepened my understanding of who I am – I left litigation. At that time I became aware of how much my life sucked. I constantly woke up with a sense of anxiety, either terrified of what may happen in court that day or wondering which file I was forgetting to draft court materials for.
I was fueled by anxiety and coffee.
Anxiety and fear of f*cking up was a constant soundtrack to the movie of my life.
And I hated that movie.
But I didn’t know how to stop watching that movie either. Being a lawyer was all I knew how to do. And living life in Toronto seemed to require money. On top of that, I was addicted to money.
I attended my first yoga class when I was in law school in 2009. My best friend from Vancouver dragged me kicking and screaming to the law school gym for yoga. I went. But I hated it. I hated the whole entire thing. It was too long, it was boring, it felt like we weren’t doing anything at all, I didn’t sweat, I didn’t build any muscle, I didn’t get a proper “workout” in.
If I had an hour during law school to be in the gym – I was going to spend it by lifting as heavy as I could, burning as many calories as I could, and getting as sweaty as I could.
I never went back to yoga. Until… Until the pain of anxiety at work drove me to madness and burn-out.
I went back to yoga, except this time – this one hour of yoga felt like magic. I didn’t understand what happened to me in that one hour, but I was changed after that class.
During the hour it felt like I could finally fully stop thinking and obsessing over every single detail of my work. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking for nearly two decades prior to this yoga class.
I was blown away by how I felt in that yoga class. I had never felt so at peace with myself before. I had never felt so still in my mind before. I had never known what pure presence felt like.
Yoga offered a path of healing myself, knowing myself deeply, a path of self-inquiry and eventually, it has been a way to a more peaceful, simple life that I learned how to live from a place of trust rather than from a place of constant anxiety and overwhelm.
I know now that my sense of self isn’t attached to the job title, how much I earn, or any of the roles I play.
I am continuously humbled by this life experience. I am humbled by the rise and flow of the dullness of depression and emptiness of being, ecstatic joy, loss of purpose, expansive feelings of love, questioning of why I exist, and everything else in between that makes up the FULL and DEEP human experience.
I am most touched by the kindness of people I meet and I feel the most alive when I witness the depth of being I feel when someone is being their most authentic real self.
I can’t wait for you to start this journey of self-awareness and self-discovery by attending one of my yoga classes!
