I first discovered yoga as a student at Tulane University. I went to Alvina’s beautiful yoga studio on Oak Street in New Orleans and immediately fell in love. The room was crowded with sweaty strangers, and interesting human sounds and foreign music could be heard as we breathed in seemingly unnatural ways and contorted our bodies (or tried, anyway) into oddly-named and weird-looking positions. And then we rested on the floor for ten minutes pretending we were dead. This was nothing like anything I had ever done before, but I will never forget the complete physical exhaustion I experienced complemented by feelings of relaxation, serenity and energy that lasted for hours after class. “Blissed out” was what I later learned to call it. Ten o’clock on Saturday morning was a mighty early and difficult time to muster up the will power (or shrug off the hangover) for a girl who had recently let her hair down from Catholic high school to embark upon an in-depth study of how really enjoy the Big Easy. Needless to say, I didn’t attend class as often as I would have liked.
