As an overachiever, I didn’t think I would love yoga. I was wrong.

I took my first yoga class on a whim. For years, I prided myself on being a strong athlete who trained hard and played college basketball. I’ve heard about yoga, and I always thought it was just stretching. But after spotting a Sunday afternoon vinyasa class at my gym, I walked into one, still dripping with sweat from my treadmill workout.

I sat stiffly on a borrowed rug worn with use. As an overachiever who didn’t know how to relax, I thought I would get very little out of this experience. “This is going to be too easy and too slow for me,” I thought. However, I was curious.

The teacher welcomed the class in a half-whisper and pressed play on what I would describe as scintillating music. You taught us using words I’d never heard before-SanskritI later learned – and she showed us moves I had never tried before. Always a good student, I loved having her near my mat, pointing out the poses and my inhales and exhales. Breathing wasn’t something I thought about much. But by the end of the class, I felt lighter and relaxed in a way I never remembered feeling before. never.

The next Sunday, my husband was trailing behind me as I walked quickly toward the studio at the gym. “Are we racing to get some relaxation?” he asked. The irony is not lost on me. But that second layer felt nothing like the first. There was a different instructor, there was no sparkling music, and worst of all, there was no tapping into that inner relaxation like the first time. Just constant ups and downs Sun salutationswhich felt mechanical. My husband gave me a look as if to say, “I can’t believe you He loves this.”

The next week, I tried another class at a yoga studio, looking for that initial high. In the middle of class, the teacher shouted Handstand He encouraged us all to “give it a try.” Immediately, I felt like the achiever inside me was stimulated. I couldn’t deal with the feeling of not being prepared or not wanting to do something exactly as instructed. I was afraid to try it for fear of failure. So I folded my mat and left yoga for six years, convinced that my previous experience was a fluke and that there was nothing left I wanted to learn from yoga.

At that time, I did what I always do: I made it. I climbed the corporate ladder, found an infertility specialist who helped my husband and I become parents to twins, and co-founded an organic baby snack company. But none of that stopped life from happening. When my father had a stroke four states away, I felt helpless, out of control, and spent many visits trying to It works situation rather than just being with him. I could see what I was doing but I couldn’t help myself. Suddenly, everything seemed out of control, and I struggled with behaviors I thought I had left behind, including an eating disorder that came back into my life.

Treatment helped. After a year of attending sessions and finally trying contemplation At the constant urging of a friend, I began to feel more space between myself and my reactions to life. It reminded me of the feeling of peace I felt after my first yoga class. I Googled “yoga class near me” and clicked on the first result.

The teacher’s name was Alex. He led me into a small, carpeted room with eight feet of ceiling and no windows. Two more women straddled me before class started. It was a small group, and I started to feel very exposed. There was no guarantee I would be able to keep up, no place to hide if I wasn’t good enough. I wanted out.

Instead, this class created, for the first time in my life, a regular yoga practice.

We have practiced a sequence that never changes, Ashtanga. The same poses. Every chapter. Breathing is synchronized with movement. At first, I was constantly falling out of them because of me Lack of flexibility. Every time I fell down, I felt like explaining to the person next to me all the other things I was really good at. But at some point, I stopped looking around the room so much and started feeling the rug under my feet. I began to feel empowered in slow movements and a sense of accomplishment in simply existing.

Over time, going to yoga became my new beach. No matter what I was dealing with in life, I could count on yoga to be a constant and influential force. As someone who was initially afraid of slowing down, I started really Loving Savasana. Some days, these were the only few minutes I allowed myself to rest.

This doesn’t mean I’m completely fixed. After months of trying to master a headstand, I got over the discomfort and pain and hurt my neck. I’ve had to think about why I keep feeling the need to prove that I can do this. The real pain (apart from the physical) came from constantly comparing myself to those around me. It’s something I’ve always done, although yoga helped me see it.

Basically, I was trying to wins Yoga. I laughed out loud when I realized that.

I still have a tendency to never give up. In other words, I’m still me. However, I have learned when to ease up, go slower, or less in Child’s Pose. Yoga helped me find what I needed: a way to curiously welcome the fulfillment-craving parts of me. To learn pose modifications and actually use them when I need to. To feel stronger and more centered every time I practice a version of the pose that works for me, because that is a sign of true strength.