Love Wins

In honor of Pride Month, we asked yogi and front desk guru, Clare, to write us a special blog post.

This weekend is Houston Pride, and in honor of LGBTQ+ pride, in honor of being a proud lesbian, and in honor of yoga and the amazing community that exists within the yoga world, I want to share with you how both yoga and Awakened has shown me my truest form of Pride.

Being proud of who you are can be one of the most difficult things that people go through in life; I know it certainly was for me. As you may know, being a member of the LGBTQ+ community sometimes comes with some people meeting you with hatred and resistance. Growing up is hard enough without groups of people hating you for being who you are. This can make it challenging to accept yourself, let alone love yourself.

Yoga has taught me the practice of self-love. I think sometimes we can forget that yoga is so much more than the physical poses that we work through on the mat. Yoga is something that happens inside of us, that touches us in a way that nothing else truly can. When we accept the challenge of listening to ourselves, and honoring where we are, both mentally and physically, that is when we are practicing yoga. That is when we choose love over ego. So, by nature, yoga is choosing love. It is choosing to be true to who you are, and to love who that person is. It is choosing to love other people, regardless of their gender identity or sexual orientation.

Awakened will forever have a piece of my heart because this was the place that I found people that didn’t care that I was a lesbian. They just saw me for who I was, and how I loved instead of the gender of the person receiving the love. Almost every person that walks through the doors of our studio practices yoga internally. The community here is just glad that there is respectful love around them.

This, to me, is something to be proud of. I’m proud of myself for loving myself, for being open, for gaining confidence in showing people who I am, for showing other people love, and for choosing love. Love wins.