For fear of leading people to believe that yoga is all rainbows and butterflies and crying on your mat, I thought I’d share my experience with yoga from the very beginning. Back when you’d find me rolling my eyes and cursing the world. Back before I liked it.

Yoga can be an incredibly intimidating practice. We see people do…

… and think, “Oh helllll no.” This is a normal reaction. I still think this when I see things I can’t do. All that has changed is that I look at things I can’t do and realize I can’t do it now, but it will come. With practice, it will come.

But it took me a while to reach that mindset with yoga. Before I started doing it, I thought yoga was THE stupidest exercise a person could do. I thought it was either crazy, impossible poses like those above or calm, simple stretching. As it turns out, it is both of these things, yes, but a whole lot more in between, too.

My very fist yoga class was at a very traditional studio. I hated it. Haaaaated it. It was slow and boring and my body didn’t fit into the poses. I made up my mind that I was designed to do this. I let it rest for a while and then gave hot yoga a try. I had interviewed a woman in New York for a freelance piece and off the record when we were just chatting, she started ranting on about how gloriously wonderful hot yoga is. I looked at her the way so many people look at me now, like she was a raging lunatic.

If yoga alone sucks then yoga with heat must be what hell is like.

But I couldn’t get her words out of my mind. “When the doors open at the end of class and the cool air rushes in over you… it’s like nothing else.”

Alright fiiiiiiiine. So I tried it. It was still uncomfortable. I still looked awkward. I couldn’t do most of the poses and I wanted to vomit about 15 minutes in.

But then I came back. And I came back again. And I came back again. Why? Because I was getting better. My chaturangas (pushups) that started as an inch dip on my knees got deeper and deeper until I was able to support my weight (all of it, off my knees) all the way down to the ground and then gracefully shoot up into upward dog like Ariel on the rock in The Little Mermaid.

My triangle started out crunched over and uncomfortable. I couldn’t reach the ground. I couldn’t hold it long enough. Slowly but surely my body figured out what I wanted to do. If you ask enough times (and politely enough), your body will catch on. It’s a little slow sometimes.

I hated peaceful warrior for a long time and ranted on about how that all changed here.

Camel was the worst of all. Oh, how I loathed that damn camel. I couldn’t bend all the way back and drop my head without getting a rush of incapacitating dizziness. I don’t know what happened (it took a long time), but finally one day it just worked. I do know that camel is a very vulnerable pose with an exposed throat and heart. Maybe I just wasn’t ready to be that vulnerable at first. If you fight yoga, it will fight you back.

My point in all of this is not to say: I hated yoga but I stuck with it and now I’m an expert. No one is an expert of yoga. We are all students of the practice, even our teachers. That’s what is so cool about it. There is always something new to learn, something to do better.

So if you tried yoga and hated it, give it another try (or several). It takes a while. If you’re starting out and are expecting an intensely gratifying and emotional experience, don’t force it. It’ll come with time. For now, laugh at yourself, understand your temporary limits and let your body catch up to where you want it to be. It’ll all fall into place.