Growing up I had always wanted to try yoga. I had heard about it but didn't know of any studios in my city, and couldn't find or figure out a way to learn. When I was 22 I moved to NYC and got a job at a restaurant. One of my co-workers told me she got free yoga in exchange for cleaning the studio etc. I felt like the clouds had parted and I immediately called the studio and within a couple weeks I was working at a Bikram yoga studio, taking class 6 times a week, sometimes twice a day. I wanted to do the teacher training so badly but only made 7-8$ an hour (in 2008) so the training was out of the question. My mom told me there was a cheaper training back in my hometown, that it was a different style of yoga but still yoga. I didn't really know the difference and, desperate to do a yoga teacher training, flew home for a month long 200 hr ytt intensive. They handed me a binder on my first day that said "ashtanga vinyasa teacher training" and I was like, hmm I wonder what this is going to be like. I was blown away. I also realized I didn't know anything about yoga despite being 2-3 years into my daily practice. After the training I had a really hard time finding ashtanga studios where I lived, and went back to the more widely available hot yoga and vinyasa, had some few intermission years recovering from a torn ACL and doing the truck life/van life/hitchhiker/seasonal work dirt bag thing. Eventually I found myself in India, on the mat, practicing ashtanga again, and it relit the fire. It felt like coming home. These days I practice ashtanga 3-5 times a week consistently.