When does a spiritual journey begin? I would say it is different for everyone. Many aspect come into play such as; ones upbringing, life experiences and what you have been exposed to and so on. Some are born into spirituality having family members teach then traditions and beliefs, while others may have stumbled into an awakening of sorts while searching for answers leading them to information, different modalities (a method of therapy that involves physical or electrical therapeutic therapies), interacting with like minded people or having experienced some sort of tragic event.
My spiritual journey began at birth. I was born into a family that is already rooted within the Catholic religion . With my father being born and raised in Ireland, his passion for his beliefs in the Catholic religion run deep. After immigrating to a small Canadian town in the late 60's, he met my mother, she too was raised in a strong Catholic upbringing. With her being the second oldest of nine children came many responsibilities at a young age. Among those were taking care of many of the household duties and her siblings. Within a year of dating my parents were married. A year later my oldest brother was born, his liver hadn't developed fully in the womb causing him to pass away at the young age of 8 months old. My parents went on to have 5 more children, me being the second youngest.
For as long as I can remember, I have felt the presence of angels around me. They had a way of communication with me through thought. I was taught at a very young age about the presence of angels in our daily life, whom were there to guide us to making the right decisions on our journey. With having an infant brother pass over to the spirit world, my parents kept his memory alive by talking to openly about his short time here on earth. They would answer any question that we had about his life and I found comfort in knowing that he was with us as we grew. Although I was connected to the spirit world at a young age, I didn't really have a full understanding of what it truly was I was experiencing. I remember my father on many occasions saying " Sinead, get you head out of the clouds, and stop day dreaming, concentrate!" As I grew older and started to enter into my adolescent years, I began to repress my gift of communication with the spirit world.
When I was 13 years old, I was diagnosed with scoliosis which is a sideways curvature of the spine. I can recall looking at the x-rays of my spine with my parents thinking, "my spine is curved like a "S", well S is for Sinead right! ". I tried to look at this experience with a positive out look. With the potential to have back pain associated with scoliosis being pretty high, my doctor at the time recommended chiropractic adjustments as well as a series of stretches I was to do everyday to help with the mobility of my growing spine. I was faithful with doing the daily stretches for a couple of weeks, which slowly depleted to once or twice a week and eventually tapering off to not doing them at all. At that time I was so active in sports of all kinds that I had no back pain, so one could see how easy it was for a 13 year old to loose focus. My back pain had finally made an appearance when I was 26, and pregnant with our first daughter. I started heading back to the chiropractor for relief and was thankful that I did.
When our daughter was 6 months old we enrolled her into a playgroup called kindermusik. There we partook in singing, dancing, reading stories, they had many different musical instruments helping children to learn how to communicate and learn through music. It wasn't before long that her sister joined her in the classes. Our teacher was also a certified yoga instructor whom taught adult yoga classes. At that time I didn't really know much about yoga other then an old schoolmate from my adolescent years used to practice with her mom who is a yoga instructor. Both our daughters enjoyed Miss Val's kindermusik classes so much that when she started to offer family yoga classes and explained the benefits to me, it was a no brainer, we signed up. After a few family yoga classes I decided to join her adult classes, I was in need of some relief from the back pain I had started experiencing after having two pregnancies' back to back, and chasing around two growing toddlers. (Our girls are 13.5 months apart).
I recall being nervous going to my first class not knowing what it was going to be like, not knowing many of the poses I was about to partake in other then a few I had learned with my daughters like down dog, child's pose, tree pose and happy baby, but mostly nervous about who would be in the room with me. I had always had high anxiety when having to be in a room with strangers or in a crowd, especially when I had to enter those situations alone. With Val as the instructor, I was able to build up the confidence to go knowing that she was so warm and welcoming. My first class was a small one, there was maybe four or five of us, which was great for me, it kept my anxiety at a low as I was able to concentrate on my practice. At the end of class as I laid in shavasana, I remembered thinking, well that wasn't too bad at all, and that a lot of those poses seemed very familiar to me. Then it dawned on me, a lot of these poses were the stretches I was instructed to do many many years ago. Wait a minute... I was doing yoga at 13 and didn't even know? How cool was that... and the yogi in me had begun to awaken.
Stay calm, stay centered, stay focused.
Sinead
TheYogiZen
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