The Path of Love Through Yoga
My path to yoga was guided by curiosity. I’m from Mexico, and I first heard about this ancient Indian discipline from a Mexican movie star who practiced yoga. I always thought of it as something mystical.
For many years I was involved in the media world. I worked in television in Mexico before a twist of fate brought me to New York, where I lived for 13 years. I was a voice talent and translator for MTV Latino. After I quit MTV, I had time to take my first yoga classes.
By 1998 I had been practicing yoga for a year and decided that it was time to delve deeper. I signed up for a training program at Integral Hatha Yoga, one of the best-known ashrams in New York City. Unlike my career in television, things immediately began to flow smoothly on my path to yoga. I started teaching a week after I graduated from yoga training. Words can’t express how I felt teaching yoga class for the first time. The only word that comes to mind is LOVE.
I was keenly interested in media and in my professional projects, but never had I experienced such a feeling of love in my work. I have always tried to instill passion in my life and work. But I have to admit that, while working in media, I was only thinking about myself and what I wanted to achieve. In yoga, it is the exact opposite. It’s never about me, it’s about my students. My awareness is practically void of ego. It’s almost as if it gets switched off automatically upon entering the shala (yoga practice room). My attention is focused on each participant, their needs, what they express to me through their practice, and the dynamics generated in each group.
That’s what I love most about my work, if you can call something that gives me so much pleasure “work.” My only interest is serving my students, and sharing the ancient practice of yoga and its important lessons with them. To me, these are some of the most powerful tools we have in this day and age to raise our consciousness, to truly “know,” and to live a full life that is mentally, physically and spiritually healthy.
I had the good fortune to have great teachers, including Shri K. Pattabhi Jois and Sharath Jois. Pattabhi Jois is the founder of Ashtanga Yoga. His grandson Sharath became his successor, after the death of Guruji Pattabhi Jois. Ashtanga is a specific sequence of asanas (postures) linked to breathing that promote the purification of the body. They are divided into six degrees of difficulty and there are very few people in the world who are qualified to teach the advanced sequences. It’s a great honor to be the only woman in Mexico authorized by Pattabhi and Sharath Jois’s school in Mysore, India to teach the second series of Ashtanga.
I founded the Ashtanga Yoga México Institute to promote the traditional teachings of Ashtanga and now serve as its director. With a focus on sharing ideas and experiences among people of different nationalities, religions, ages and backgrounds, the institute provides an important network for organizing workshops and courses. We all share the same goal and interests: to practice yoga and use it as a tool to improve our quality of life and our environment in every way possible. Along with the many benefits I gain from practicing yoga, I have traveled all over the world with Ashtanga to share this beautiful discipline, from New York, Miami, Philadelphia and Frankfurt, to Peru, Israel, Texas and, of course, Mexico.
Leaving MTV was difficult, but this heartache soon turned into the beginning of what is now my greatest passion.
Olivia Martínez was born in Mexico City on 5 October 1969. She is a yoga teacher and director of the Ashtanga Yoga México Institute (www.ashtangayogamexico.com). She lives in Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico.