Hi! It’s Antoinette!

Everyone has a story……and here is mine. I thought it would important for you to know a bit about how I got here and how I feel that I can help you with your journey

I entered into the fitness world upon getting out of the Navy. I was quite young and being in the military gave me an inkling that exercise and I really liked one another. While being stationed in Bermuda and right after my son was born, I became the only aerobics instructor and personal trainer on the base. It all happened unexpectedly. After a time, one day I saw a picture of a bodybuilder, Gladys Portugues on the front of her book and said…”I want to look like that”! So, I set out to become a bodybuilder and moved back to the US where I pursued it with vigor, dedication and you could say…obsession.

After about 6 years or so of hard core heavy weight bodybuilding as well as being a full time aerobics instructor, personal trainer and dancer, while spending the rest of my time boxing in a boxing gym, running, spin classes daily and high impact aerobics, you could say that exercise became the most important thing in my life.

My young son told me so one day. It was one of those moments when I saw the path that I was on and became concerned. He was right. Exercise was put above everything. During those years, I felt that exercise kept me sane and allowed me to focus on something other than my past childhood traumas. It created, what I thought, was a body that would shield me from anymore emotional pain.

I worked and worked out at a couple of different upscale gyms where all of the elite athletes and competitors from the beachy, fit town I lived on congregated with their own obsessions for the perfect body and the endurance of champions.

This is where the journey really begins….

One day I noticed a man in the gym that had on a white outfit and was clearly from somewhere else. I peeked in at his classes, becoming both amazed and curious. I soon wiggled my athletic self in and started to partake.

This was my introduction and awakening into yoga. It turned out that this man was a Vietnamese yoga master by the name of Master Adam Nguyen, who was a descendant of another Yoga Master. He was also a martial artist. He looked to be in his late 40’s early 50’s. He was as fit, limber and lithe as anyone I’d ever seen. I’d seen the most incredible muscular and toned bodies but what he had was something different.

When he talked, he seemed to calm the room. His prayer at the beginning of the practice even though difficult for my American ears to understand was something like, “be calm, be centered, be peaceful.” He would take us through a vigorous warm up that seemed so different than anything I had done. He would then take us into the asana portion which was so challenging and yet so connecting. He moved like effortless water. At the end, there would be another prayer and when he put his hands together and bowed, I felt like he was connecting to something sacred and kind.

I wanted that!

So…in Antoinette style, I became obsessed with yoga. I did every yoga class that I could. Master Adam’s, yes, but also anyone else’s that I could fit into my schedule. I wanted to learn. With time, I eventually stopped bodybuilding and boxing. I just wanted to do more and more yoga.

At age 29, I woke up to go to the personal training studio where I worked. I stood out of bed and realized that my spine was leaning to the left and that I couldn’t make me spine stand straight up. I was also in pain. A pain that was very different then the usual burning of muscles as I strained them daily through my many workouts. I literally crawled up the stairs of the studio to meet my first client of the day. It turned out she and her husband owned an oil company and she asked me if she could help me in any way. She funded my care for about a year. I think that may be one of the first times I went to a chiropractor. They twisted my pelvis, and back and sent me on my way.

What happened after that would set me on an entirely different course. From then on, I started to have more and more pain in my back. Going into what I would call, a “back crisis”. These episodes were in my spine moving it into this strange exaggerated curve to the left. I was bed bound and very sad. It started to affect me being able to work and take care of things in my life. These early years were like a continual dark night of the soul. I had put so much credence on being this incredibly healthy and fit athlete that I couldn’t imagine who I would be without that identity.

Who am I now?

I began to slowly rehabilitate myself through the smallest of movements, allowing me to go deeper and deeper into my pain. When I would come back from one of these back episodes, I felt this deep sense of gratitude for just being able to stand straight up with less pain. It was always quite humbling.

I eventually made my way to a yoga training. I decided on Yoga Therapy because of my own injuries and realizing that other people were in pain also. While in yoga teacher training, one of the young women taking the training with me mentioned Kripalu Center. I had never heard of the place or name.

I went home to Virginia Beach, and one fine day received a Kripalu magazine in the mail. It’s still a mystery to me how that happened as I didn’t ask for one and never gave her my address. I looked through and was amazed that there was an actual place where people who loved yoga could go and be together. I immediately applied for the volunteer program and was accepted. That was in 2004.

While volunteering, I found Journey Dance. Through all of the years of rehabilitating myself, I barely danced. I longed for it. When I took my first class, I knew that I wanted to dance again but in this way, which was not about a performance, but for the soul.

These years have taken me on so many more twists and turns, trainings and learnings, and that’s probably plenty for now. Going through this personal and intimate journey of finding my own way back to myself and also learning how to love my body and not push it to levels that injure it has given me the material, training and experience to offer you something that helps you with your own precious body.

We are in these bodies for a while, and they are our friends. I’ve learned to befriend my body, listening to it more carefully and most of all, honoring it.