Yoga in Porto Alegre

Once I awaken from jet-lag induced sleep, finding a good yoga studio in Porto Alegre will be on the top of my list. I'm hoping to teach yoga to either the kids I'll be working with at my internship or my fellow co-workers. I'm going to need to immerse myself in the language of yoga in Portuguese because I only know the English translations of the Sanskrit words. And quite frankly, I haven't spent any time using my Portuguese trying to describe how to put your body into various unusual (or usual) positions.




However, after reading a friend's fabulous blog on her adventures with yoga in Nicaragua, I can't help but wonder what yoga will look like in Brazil. A quick yoga + Porto Alegre google search brings up such a plethora of overwhelming options, that it appears that whatever yoga I want will be available there, I just have to find it.

This may be a bit of a quest because finding the yoga (and instructors) that work for you can require some effort. For a long time I didn't like yoga because I was always comparing myself with everyone else and thinking that I should be doing the poses perfectly even if it was my first time trying them. Frankly, I felt kind of bored and didn't understand what all the fuss was about. Luckily, the same fabulous friend brought me to a wonderful yoga studio in Austin about a year ago and I was hooked from the start of my first class. The instructor created such a beautiful space for accepting myself where I was at, that I could finally shed some of my competitive type A nature and just "be" in the practice.

Really, it was love at first sight. And by first sight I mean the first time I realized what it was all about. By the summer I was enrolled in their 200-hour training so I could learn how to bring yoga into my clinical work as a future social worker. In the fall I was traveling to Boston with some amazing women for a Street Yoga training.




And so if I can bring yoga into my internship in Brazil, I will. But I'm thinking that this will first involve a quest to find out what yoga in Brazil has to teach me.