In today’s blog post I’d like to share with you What is a Yogi and my Yoga Journey - from the very beginning!

Sharing writings and conversations always helped me to put into the world what I feel inside and my Truth - I hope I’ll inspire you too!

What is a Yogi?

- has been a great question to me.



A yogi happens to be someone who is a practitioner of the yogic eight limbs and prescribes to the eight limbs path, that leads to enlightenment ; someone who is deeply dedicated to the self discovery of complete involution that brings force to evolution.

I feel that when we take a yoga class often people see the movement, the asana practice to be the all practice of yoga but realistically speaking yoga is a full lifestyle: yoga is how you eat, how you treat your neighbors, how compassionate you are maybe to the less fortunate, yoga is a full observation of how we live our life with a deeper sense of all-ness and unification and integration of our environment and ourselves.

Bringing together the outside and the inside so we can have an holistic approach of how to live a fulfilled life.

Most of the people think that yoga are classes in which you learn how to stretch your body, but this just the tip of the iceberg!

Yoga is a full lifestyle and it involves each areas of your life -

there is no minimum or maximum age you can start because at every age will give you a completely different perspective about life and awareness of your body, mins and soul not just as a self but also with the whole universe.



My Yoga Journey

When I first started my yogic path everything was pretty different from where I am now: consistency is key and this has been life changing  for me aswell.

Yoga is consistency, staying dedicated to a practice and observant of the changes that happens when you do stay consistent.

I first started when I was 19teen, and today in 2022 are 12 years of devoted practice.

At the time I could not even touch my knees, get away with touching my feet!

I was playing competitive soccer, I was a left forward and I was often sprinting up and down the field which means that my hips, my hamstring, my calf muscles where tight! I had recurrent ankle injury each year and I was so in pain that I often had to take salt baths to get back on the field again!

I have so many people who always says me: “Andrew you must have been so flexible! Did you practice gymnastics!?” And think that I had an advantage but this is not true at all!

We all have a starting point, but my starting point was definitely of inflexibility! At that time I could barely sit crosslegged: I had to wrap my harms around my knees to be able to sit in easy pose - my inner groin was so tight that I couldn’t let me knees open!

My first yoga class was a Bikram Yoga class:

I had an ankle injury at the time and my ex girlfriend, who was an incredible tennis player, asked me to go to this yoga class with her.

It was quite funny cause she said me “ if you don’t like it, you won’t have to come anymore!” - so I was like ok cool, let’s try once and I won’t have to come anymore! I had no idea what was a Birkam Yoga class, I actually had no idea at all of what yoga was - I’ve practiced just once before with my mum and a group of old people which left me with a really weird sensation so I wasn’t really inspired to try it again!

But my ankle injury was getting really bad so this and my ex girlfriend inspired me to try yoga again.

When I went into my first Bikram Yoga class I got my ego with me: I realized that I was a 19 years old student inside a class of lifelong practitioner. I get in there a bit late so they putted me in the corner, where the heater was! Basically I was all sweated even before the class started - I had this mirror in front of me which made me face myself, my doubts, my insecurities, my lack of discipline and commitment to my body during the all class.

That mirror reminded me that

all I had to do during this class was breathe, and do what I could for that day.

And this is a mantra I still keep with me! Do what you can, do your best!

At the end of the class the teacher came to me and said me I did pretty good - he asked me to come back everyday for 30 days. And after those 30 days challenge, I came back to 100 days challenge.

I can now say I went in with one perspective and came out committed and with a totally evolved perspective  - the opportunity to breathe deeper into my body, to face myself into that mirror, breathe in and into my challenges and discover each and every day how much my body was connected to my mind.

my approach to the practice

At that time I was studying microbiology and I was really interested in understanding the chemicals and how they work and occur in the brain and how the cortisol, the stress, is nullified by serotonin and dopamine, which are the good stressors that help us to commit to things and feel happy in our body, feel this sense of joy and love.

The more that I came with an optimistic approach towards my practice, not judging myself, not looking at the people around me but instead looking at myself and do the best I could do, that is when the progression in my yoga practice happened for me!

I could finally touch my toes after 90 days of practice! But the point was not about my physical results instead was more about my inner growth and re-discovery of my deepest self.

AcroYoga and Yoga in general helped me understand Sthira (Steadiness) and Sukha (Ease), the sacred Rhythm to move through our lives.

Those concept makes us understand how to

balance and flow through life at the same time, finding a deep sense of structure which compensate strength and ease.

Like Ha-Tha yoga represents the sun and the moon, so Shtira and Sukha helps us to comprehend how to cultivate our Prana harmonizing all the aspects in our life, especially polarities: like the sun and the moon, the feminine and the masculine, the opposing forces of light and dark!

All of this energies already exists within ourselves and the all purpose of yoga is to make us understand how to unify these different energies and be constantly in balance.

When we’re in balance within ourselves we can start observe that our surroundings start to find its own balance too, and that was what AcroYoga has been for me! AcroYoga has been the evolution of my own self practice. But AcroYoga is for another blog!

when I discovered different styles

Later I’ve started to work for a soft wear yoga company called “MindBody”, which made all the yoga soft wears for the yoga studios and I got really good calling all the yoga studios and getting them sign up for the yoga soft wears! My manager saw this and wanted to take me out to a Yoga Journal conference and gave me the opportunity to talk in person with all the yoga people and be face to face with the industry!

This seemed a great opportunity and I’ve been talking with yoga studios from all over the world! My manager decided to let me take some yoga classes on the last day and at that time I’ve never been doing a Vinyasa Yoga class and I didn’t even know they existed different styles of yoga!

In Bikram Yoga all they said was that Bikram Yoga was the best - so I had no idea of different styles!

Basically my manages suggested me to go to Dharma Mittra, David Swenson and Seane Corn. Those three teachers where absolutely incredible!

In David Swenson class, which was an Ashtanga Yoga Class, I have seen asanas and transitions I didn’t even know they existed! He was guiding us with such a smile and a sense of love, passion and gratitude for what he was doing…

Dharma Mittra instead was a 85 year old men which was doing headstand with no hands and doing a lot of difficult asanas I didn’t even know how to do! This class taught me how yoga brings us longevity…

Then I went to Seane Corn Class, which was a completely different class: this class brought me to spaces in my body I was holding traumas. She’s a yoga activist so the way she was teaching was all about breathing into the posture, feeling the posture and release the tensions out of the muscles coming on a new space of renewal. In this class I understood that yoga was not just about the spiritual body but it’s a space in which we can release spiritual trauma, anchestrals trauma and things that we are holding inside of our  psyche  that needed to be released. She has a very somatic approach teaching yoga which feels like a therapy, and this was an all entire opening for me.

Each one of these teachers helped me understand yoga has many ways and expands in all the aspects of our lives.

Since then I’m devoted to share Yoga around the all world!

If you’d like to listen more about this story you can find the link to the Podcast here:

Hope you’d like to read about my Yoga Journey! Love and Light


Andrew7Sealy