Your First Yoga Class - by Mehtab, Yoga Yoga's Founder

Do you remember your first yoga class? For some of you, it may have only been last week - for others, it may be hidden in the distant past.

Whenever it was, your first yoga class will forever be a benchmark in your life, like your first day in school or your first date. Only when you look back do you realize what a life-changing moment it was.

And like your first day in school or your first date, your first yoga class was probably a mix of anxiety, excitement, fear, hope, curiosity and accomplishment.

I remember my first yoga class - 34 years ago in the living room of a Kundalini Yoga ashram in Houston, Texas. I had been dutifully studying the photographs in Light on Yoga, the classic asana text by B.K.S. Iyengar, attempting to teach myself exotically named postures like Pincha Mayurasana and Hanumanasana with only painful results. I knew I needed a teacher, so off I went to the closest yoga class I could find (and the cheapest - one dollar got you in the door).

Five minutes after I walked in, I was on my back with my legs up in the air, breathing like a freight train on fire, while a guy in white robes was yelling "KEEP UP! KEEP UP!" and banging on a gong so loud my brain turned to melted Jell-O. At the end I was handed a mug of Yogi Tea (yes, that yogi tea!).

It was perfect. Perfect because no matter what happened, I had done it. I made it through a yoga class. And even though it was incredibly weird, it felt somehow right. (No doubt the fact that I had been tripping on psychedelics the week before gave me the proper sanguine perspective on what was truly weird.)

And I went back. Week after week, every day for 14 months, until I eventually moved into a yoga teacher training ashram in California where I could learn to be the guy who yelled and played the gong.

I often think about how the greatest changes in your life often begin with what may seem to be inconsequential moments. If I had merely stayed with my yoga book in my bedroom and never went to that first yoga class, there would be no Yoga Yoga and even my marriage of 30 years would not have occurred.

Each day someone comes into Yoga Yoga to take his or her first yoga class. It may have been one of your friends. It may be the person relaxing beside you in your yoga class. It may even have been you recently. Someone is always taking their first yoga class.

The first yoga class is just as important as your first day at school, your first date, the first time you hold the love of your life in your arms. You know, or you will know, it can be just as life changing.

So when your friends come to their first class, when you recommend someone take a yoga class, or when you meet someone who is doing yoga for the first time, support them. Just support them and be with them and let them know they are indeed doing something great, something life changing, something they will always be grateful for.

They say the longest journey begins with the first step. In yoga, the greatest journey begins with your first class. Millions have taken this journey before you. Millions will follow you.

Yoga is eternal. Its rewards are immense and unimaginable. In the words of the Bhagavad Gita, composed over two thousand years ago, "No step is lost on this path of Yoga, and no dangers are found. And even a little progress is freedom from fear."

When someone takes that first class, that first step, honor them and welcome them. They are traveling with you now, forever more, until you both reach the guaranteed destination of the Union of the Self.