3.2
July 18, 2013

How Yoga Set Me Free. ~ Nick Aldridge {photos}

There is something that happens as you turn your attention inwards in a yoga class, the sweat drips from your brow and your breath becomes the metronome for your body’s movements, your mind focuses down to the smallest details of your flow and posture.

A couple of years ago, I had a huge personal crisis which forced me to question the way I had previously defined myself, my life and my work as a photographer. That very same day, I happened to be shooting some pictures of a local yoga teacher, who invited me to join her first class in her new yoga studio straight after the shoot.

I went to the class—and the next day I went back.

I went back every day I could!

Yoga entered my life on the same day as everything that had seemed so solid was taken away—that was the start.

After a while, I was being introduced as Nick, the yogi, not Nick, the photographer. It felt really strange and liberating, partly like I’d shed my old skin, but also like I’d lost something…yet, ironically I had quietly begun taking the most creative pictures of my life.

I had loosened my white-knuckled grip on photography, creativity and work and the narrow meaning I had given them.

I gradually found playfulness in my work again. My creativity began flowing from a much more generous and human place. It came as such a surprise to me because all I did was focus on yoga, and trying to heal myself.

After three years, yoga spat me back out again to return to my career as a photographer; refreshed, fit, healthy, trusting and most of all, happy!

A deep sense of flow runs through my life, it all sits a little lighter on my shoulders and I feel a deep gratitude to yoga and it’s subtle power for bringing me back to myself.

Here are some of the yoga images I made with my amazing yogi friends and generous teachers along the way…

 

 

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Ed: Bryonie Wise

 

 

 

 

 

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