AYUDH PORTRAITS: VICTORIA STAS
Yesterday was the International Yoga Day and today we bring you a very special AYUDH portrait: meet Victoria, a certified yoga teacher and team member of AYUDH Europe, who will share with us her journey from IT to yoga!
I am Victoria. Before I came into yoga I was working in an IT company for travel agencies. It was quite interesting but a very intense and demanding job. I think this is why I got to yoga because I wanted something relaxing for my body, my nerves. I knew yoga was something as a lifestyle that could give more balance to my life.
I quit my job because it was too much for me, so I decided to do volunteering in a yoga retreat in Italy. During this volunteering, I had one yoga offer per day, and these people working there were yogis. I had one class per day and I saw that my body felt more at ease. It also (felt like) a retreat and I was immersed in the lifestyle in terms of nutrition, practice, and other things. I learned that yoga was on three levels: the physical, emotional, and psychological.
After 3 months, I knew I wanted to have a deeper personal practice.
When I was working in Paris, I would randomly take the metro and take the stop when I felt like it. One time I stopped and went out and in this stop, I found a yoga centrecenter and I just loved the atmosphere. I saw the picture of the yoga master, and I felt connected.
After three months of volunteering, I remembered this place and I knew they were giving training so I took this with them and allowed me to dive into the ancient science and wisdom of yoga. I decided to go to Kerala, India to visit this ashram and do the training there.
This was 1 month of intensive training for 200 hours. It was like the ancient lifestyle of rishis, where we woke up very early to meditate and did so many lectures on the science of yoga, food, lifestyle.
I felt very passionate about it and I really wanted to find out how it would feel in my body. Yoga is all about experiencing oneself. I wanted to know how this lifestyle could impact me.
It was difficult, I remember a time when I got very sick, and I had to go to class and I couldn't understand anything. It was very intense, I had to be very disciplined. The group was very diverse, about 150 people from all over the world taking the same training. Thankfully the energy of the group was helping throughout the whole month of this course.
How did you know this is something you want to pursue in life?
A lot of suffering. I had to face a lot of challenges in every aspect of life in relationships, personal, work. I was wondering what I wanted to do in life, what I was meant to do. I felt disappointed and I tried my best but I did not feel happy. I decided to change my methodology, this is where I began to question myself.
I enjoyed my period of life before it, but I felt like it was enough. It didn't feel meaningful to me.
People don't have to leave their job but they can try to find something they're passionate about. If they're passionate about yoga, there are many possibilities to take courses, it does not have to be as intense as mine. If they really want a drastic change they can go for it, take the leap, and they are not sure about themselves, they should try volunteering because they can try it and see afterwards if it's for them.
