Today we’d like to introduce you to Emilia Arenas.
Emilia, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I come from a divorced parents and a very dysfunctional family where I would live with my mom and my brother. My brother seven years older than me decided to stop talking to me when I was about six years old. He never talked to me until he died at age 29. My mom used to work really head and barely has time to be with me. I felt very lonely and left behind. I had some refuge with my friends and my grandmother who was very close to me.
Still, at a very young age I felt really sad and not wanting to keep on going with my life. Tried to commit suicide when I was 14 when I had already drinking and had a hard time trying to quit alcohol. I had really turbulent years from 14 to 25, drinking, getting drunk and getting involved in crazy relationships where I would feel worthless and just with the same idea of wanting to not be here no more. I was lucky enough at age 25 to find a 12 steps program that helped me to fulfill the big and empty space in the middle of my heart. I finally stopped drinking and started a path of self-recovery and spiritual search.
Later on, I found yoga and that was the bright light that I was looking for. I’ve been practicing yoga ever since and my life has changed completely. I live with my beautiful daughter, which dad I divorced three years ago. My ex-husband and I are very good friends now, all the yoga and the spiritual research I have done has allowed us the keep our relationship healthy so we can give our daughter the opportunity to see her parents working as a team and lovingly help each other to keep growing.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Having had a not very supportive family to help me build a good relationship with myself and being strong enough to take the right decisions. Not being able to just accept and love myself the way I was. That made me get engaged in relationships where I was taken advantage of because I would always think I had no worth and people could do whatever they wanted to do with me. Of course, the drinking part was really painful, and a marriage with someone who could never really fell in love with me making my heart feeling lonely and hopeless.
Emilia Arenas – what should we know? What do you do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
I am a yoga teacher. And I have developed over the years of self-practice a sense of devotion and compassion towards others wanting always to help people to feel good about themselves. I work at an amazing yoga studio where I have learned everything I know about yoga. We teach Ashtanga yoga and try to follow the lineage with respect and devotion. My goal is to help my students to stay connected to the source they believe in and use yoga as a tool to see to good and the bad that we all carry within. Yoga to me has been the path to find a mirror and see who I really am, and also to see all that with love and compassion. I would love to be able to show that path to my students so we all together can stop judging ourselves in the first place so we can stop judging other and see other from a place or real love.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
Yoga is going through a stage that I don’t necessarily like. Yoga has become another workout and people use it only for getting the body stronger and more flexible. We have a task as yoga teachers to change that and develop ourselves a good understanding of the real purpose of yoga, practice it and then sharing it with our students.
Contact Info:
- Phone: 7865153241
- Email: emilia.ashtangi@gmail.com
- Instagram: emilia_ashtangayoga
- Facebook: Emília Arenas
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