ONEYOGAHOUSE

By Agatha Pym

Over the years, I have found myself constantly moving at the speed of light. Friends, family, and bosses at work have always told me I need to slow down, and I never listened. While it is my superpower, it became my downfall. At the end of last year, I finally realized that, due to physical health issues, this year I needed to calm my nervous system and find peace within. A lesson that took me 32 years to learn.

Growing up with a mother as a yoga teacher, I was on the mat as early as I can remember. From when I was eight years old, I have always wanted to do my YTT but said I didn’t have the time right now. Finally, in January, I decided it was time.

I came to my 200-hour teacher training at OneYogaHouse knowing I was going to deepen my practice, learn a lot, and ground myself with this commitment to my body and nervous system. I knew I loved moving my body with the asana, always craved it, and it always made me feel good. What I didn’t know was that I was about to have the entire architecture of my inner world gently, and sometimes not so gently, dismantled, rebuilt, restructured, my entire perception of life and myself rewired with new perspective, insights, and a framework to change my life — and the life of those around me — dramatically for the better.

I knew coming into training that I would challenge myself in so many ways. Diving into anatomy, learning how to sequence, and discovering how to unlock my inner teacher were all intimidating to embark on. There was a part of me that intuitively felt I could teach, but I was also open to simply deepening my practice and leaving the training with a greater wealth of knowledge.

I’ve been surprised to discover not only that I feel even more drawn to teaching, but also how confident I am in my ability to do so. Even as I make mistakes, find my stride, and lean into the discomfort of learning something new, I’ve found so much fun, excitement, and curiosity in the process.

There’s a trust I feel within myself that I did not expect coming into this training. I remember hoping I would gain confidence in my practice, in how I feel about my body, and find a new community in Brooklyn. But discovering this inner trust, and the confidence to explore who I am as a teacher, feels like the beginning of a whole new journey that I can’t wait to explore. There have also been styles and topics that surprised me. I was always someone attracted to sweaty, fiery flows. I still am. I love the feeling of moving my body with fluidity, building heat and strength while quieting my thoughts. But through the training, I became curious about practices like Yin, Restorative, and Katonah Yoga. I’m especially interested in learning more about Katonah given its emphasis on self-discovery and understanding the body like a house. Yin and Restorative were practices I rarely explored before training, but I now have so much more gratitude for their intention, the role they can play in nervous system regulation, and the impact I’ve felt personally from practicing them. I also never expected to feel so deeply moved by mantra and chanting. During one day of training, Felipe played the harmonium while we chanted Om Gum Ganapataye Namah together. It felt like it broke down every wall I had up in that moment. Something inside of me opened, and I felt an intense wave of emotion.

The first surprise was the sheer vastness of what I didn’t know and the amount there was and still is to learn. The shifts in perception began immediately when I learnt about the eight limbs. I arrived thinking yoga was movement. I am leaving understanding it as a complete philosophy of living and being, that everything we have is right in front of us. Under the guidance of our amazing guru Anna, the eight limbs unfolded before me like a text I had been holding upside down for years and was finally learning to read. The yamas and niyamas weren’t abstract ethics; they were mirrors. Pranayama revealed that the breath I had taken for granted for 30-something years was actually one of the most powerful tools I possessed. Chanting mantras evoked the utmost inner peace, gratitude, and pride I have felt, something I usually struggle with. It evoked emotions from deep within me that I knew I had, but this time they arrived with a new perspective; they washed over me in a visualization of a wave, and afterward I felt relief, happiness, and gratitude.

Learning that it is okay to acknowledge these emotions, and pride is something I deserve to feel. The history, the philosophy, the Sanskrit — while at first it was overwhelming, I quickly realized none of it felt like information to memorise. It felt like remembering something I had always, at some small cellular level, deep down, already known, but now it was brought to my attention. The texts were fascinating for me to read, as I felt so connected, so inspired I wanted to keep going and dive deep. The moment that cracked something open most unexpectedly was a spiritual awakening.

On my first 1:1 with Anna in the studio, I learned the true meaning of yoga: connection between Atma and Paramatma, cessation of fluctuation of the mind. My mind was truly blown. Connection is something I value so deeply as a core value; in that moment, I immediately knew yoga was going to become so much more important to me than I ever had realized it would be. With this front of mind, spirituality expanded within me as the weeks moved through; I felt something emotionally unveil itself. I don’t have a single word for it. A softening, perhaps. A willingness to feel more of what is actually moving through me, rather than managing it. Finding connection to myself and the universe. It has given me comfort, peace, and trust that everything is as it needs to be; connection is everything to me.

What has surprised me in my practice is the newfound craving to slow down, as usually I have operated oppositely. The new love, craving, and respect for pranayama, savasana, mantras,meditation, warming up and cooling down in a flow as core elements of building the house with intention. Grounding, calming my nervous system beyond realms of what I thought was possible, has unlocked the best version of myself to be able to show up for others and prioritize in life what is important to me.

I started out thinking I needed a brief 3-month period of grounding; I have come to understand that stillness isn’t the absence of movement. It is the ground from which all real movement comes. I learned that I am someone who needs to be grounded, someone who needs to connect myself to the universe. This is my reorientation.

The challenges, though. They deserve their own reckoning. Physically, the training brought its own unexpected lesson. An old injury re-emerged in my sacrum part way through, and at first I was devastated. I had wanted so badly to show up fully for my beautiful new yogi community, to move alongside them, to demonstrate, to be present in my body the way I had imagined. That felt suddenly out of reach, and the grief of it was real. But what the injury ultimately gave me was a shift in perspective I couldn’t have manufactured any other way. It asked me to reconsider what showing up actually means. It deepened my understanding of injury not as failure, but as information, a doorway into learning more about my body, its history, and its intelligence than I ever would have accessed from a place of ease. It reshaped my relationship with mental health around physical limitation, teaching me that how we hold an injury matters as much as the injury itself, and how to help others in the future. In many ways, the sacrum became one of my most important teachers.

The emotional and intellectual demands were something else entirely. Teaching, actually standing at the front of a room, cueing bodies, holding space, finding my voice — this was where I met my most uncomfortable edges. I am someone who has high standards, who respects mastery and perfection deeply. Being in a room full of incredible peers who raise the bar every single session, being witnessed by Anna, a teacher, mentor, guru, and friend whom I admire profoundly, and knowing I was very much a beginner at this particular skill created a very specific kind of vulnerability. I wanted so badly to meet the room’s level, and I often felt the gap between where I was and where I wanted to be acutely. The discomfort and sadness I felt of being seen imperfect, uncertain, raw, failing was the most uncomfortable thing I’ve done in a very long time. Not a difficult asana. Not a demanding sequence. Standing at the front of a room and trying to find the trust that I had something worth offering. That was the real edge.

What the challenges have taught me is something I will carry for a long time: that being vulnerable, nervous, or scared is a sign you’re pushing yourself to grow, expand, transform. It is a reminder that I am capable of learning new things when I commit fully. That the gap between where I start and where I want to be is not a failure; it’s the entire point. The practice of teaching, of stepping into discomfort again and again, revealed an inner confidence that wasn’t yet built, but is being built.

The lesson I am taking most seriously leaving this training is that confidence is not a trait you either have or don’t have; it is something you grow through repetition, through showing up, through choosing to trust yourself in moments when every instinct says to disappear. Physically, the challenges taught me to let go. To show up the best you can, understand everyone goes through temporary moments where they can’t perform as they would like, trust that this is temporary, and that the reason physical or mental hurdles show up is to teach you something, not to punish you. Through my learnings, I am so grateful to have integrated philosophical, spiritual, and physical practices that are improving my life dramatically.

Yoga Sutra I.33 offers a practical framework I return to daily: “meet happiness with friendliness, suffering with compassion, virtue with joy, and unkindness with equanimity.”

Physically, I have begun to understand slowness as a form of power, not passivity. I move through mornings differently now with breath, with intention, with a small ritual of stillness before the day pulls me into its current. I’ve kept Sunday night meditation a ritual, sitting in quiet space to notice the energy and emotions I feel, to consider what my body needs. Every day, I’ve visualized my chakras as I breathe, finding where I need to unlock energy or focus my energy. As I fall asleep at night, I use the mind as a cave visualization, moving between that and visualising ida and pingala breath running up each side of each chakra (as we drew in our notepads). This gives me comfort and has put me into the deepest relaxing state, knowing my energy, mind, soul, and body are calm as I drift to sleep.

Because of this training, I have found something I didn’t quite have a name for before: joy that is also purposeful. A new light on the path ahead. I want to share the philosophy, history, and spirituality that moved me so deeply, not because I have mastered it, but because I have been genuinely changed by it, and that kind of change I hope my loved ones can experience too someday. I hope to teach yoga to students to be able to spread love, connection, energy, wisdom, and positive spirit further. To make others around me feel good, as good as I’ve felt through this journey.

This training has given me so much higher purpose, grounding, and an understanding of who I am that feels truer and more spacious than anything I arrived with. I know my path is drawing me closer to spreading the yoga wisdom, evoking the same joy I have found in others through everything I have learnt and will continue to learn. I am so grateful to have found this community, a new lease on life where I can focus my energy towards making a positive impact on the universe.

I came in knowing I loved the movement. I leave knowing that the movement was always pointing me somewhere, guiding me to this beautiful journey that I am just getting started. I am energized to follow and see where this journey takes me.