From Burnout to Clarity: Slowly, Slowly

There was a time when I believed “showing up no matter what” was the highest form of dedication to myself and my yoga practice. For almost a decade, I lived by the tag-line that Ashtanga was an “everyday hustle”, encouraged by a teacher who valued discipline and unquestioning loyalty above all else. At the time, I thought I was accessing deep Self devotion. I had never shown up for anything with such loyalty, openness and genuine curiosity. Looking back, I can see how often it meant tuning out the quiet signals of my own body and intuition. How I dampened my own Self connection because someone on “the path” insisted that they knew me and my story better than I knew myself. I followed that, unquestioning, for 7 years until the deep signs of burnout and self betrayal started to make themselves known. I was resentful, exhausted and unmotivated to show up on my mat.

What I understand now is that my burnout didn’t come from the practice itself, but from the way I related to it. I was taught that consistency mattered more than discernment, that progress meant overriding discomfort or pain rather than pausing to inquire into it. I wasn’t encouraged to ask questions.  In hindsight, I see how easily the language of devotion can be shaped by another person’s authority, until it becomes less about listening inward and more about performing loyalty outward. And for years, I thought that was the entire point. I thought that was the mark of a “good” teacher and practitioner. And for years, I taught from this exact lens, the one that led to my own Self disconnection.

That experience has become one of my greatest teachers — more potent than any posture or sequence I ever memorized. The slow unraveling of my practice stripped away the illusions I had about what yoga “should” look like, and it revealed something essential: that without autonomy and discernment, yoga loses its power to heal. What I needed was not more discipline, but the freedom to meet myself honestly on the mat. And what I needed most from a teacher was not control or micromanagement, but compassion — someone willing to hold space for the complexity of being human, rather than demanding perfection at any cost.

My personal practice has changed.  What was once rigid and externally driven has softened into something exploratory and deeply personal. It has become a space of real curiosity — not about how far I can go, but about what is present in each moment. Agency has taken the place of obedience. Instead of striving to prove devotion, I practice asking questions, noticing sensations, and honoring the rhythms of my own body. I’ve assigned myself no real “prescription” other than arriving. And my arrival is slow. Intentional. My process with interacting with postures is slow. Intentional. Some days standing, some days half primary. some days second. Rarely third. Very rarely third. As they say, “Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly”. And truly… what is the rush? The postures are no longer checkpoints of progress or accomplishment; they are invitations to listen more closely, to explore more fully, and to belong to myself without condition.

This shift has reshaped everything about the way I teach (note that I am human, and a product of my learning. I do not claim perfection in my application, rather an acknowledgement that I can and want to work differnty within a system that celebrates the distorted masculine). Instead of asking students to mold themselves to an ideal, I invite them to stay curious. Instead of obedience, I encourage exploration. My aim is to create a space where discipline and devotion live side by side with gentleness, where effort is balanced with rest, and where the courage to listen inward is valued just as much as the ability to press forward. In this way, the practice becomes a mirror that reflects truth rather than an altar where we abandon ourselves.

And this leads directly into the intent as  Columbus Ashtanga Yoga Club grows into a new, vital space. I want it to be a home for practitioners who are intelligent, discerning, and deeply engaged — not because they obey without question, but because they are awake to their own process. My hope is that CAYC becomes a place where we practice autonomy together, where yoga is not a performance of loyalty to a system or a person, but a steady returning to ourselves. A collective where we each honor our own rhythms while still walking the path side by side.

“ I can do nothing but work on myself. You can do nothing but work on yourself.  -Ram Dass

Thank you for reading,

Sarah Rae Nelson, Founder, CAYC