Hi Pure Yoga amigos!
In celebration of the Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15 to October 15), I was invited to share with you a little bit of my experience as a Spanish speaker and proud Latin American woman living in the USA.
My name is Monica Ossandon. I was born and raised in Santiago de Chile and I have been teaching at PURE Yoga Dallas since 2016. I can’t be more grateful for the kindness and the inclusivity I have experienced at PURE from the entire community.
I have been lucky enough to travel around Latin America and different cities in the U.S. teaching Yoga, meeting wonderful people and getting to know a little bit more about different cultures. Every place is different, every yoga studio feels like a brand new world and a mind expanding experience. There is no place like another and sharing a common language is not synonymous with culture.
Since I became a Yoga Teacher in 2011, I have taught in multiple Yoga studios in Santiago de Chile, Buenos Aires-Argentina, Mexico City, Guadalajara, Merida, Cancun, San Luis Potosi en Mexico and Cali-Colombia. I can’t believe how lucky I am. I have created strong connections with so many wonderful people I met during my travels and I have seen so many beautiful places.
When I grew up in Chile, a very gray city, in a skinny country surrounded by big mountains and an extremely cold and violent ocean, I always felt trapped and suffocated by the geography and for what I thought it was a very limiting society. It seemed like there was no escape. I felt so much pressure from “the people”. I felt like I needed to fit in this very narrow mold to be able to be accepted and do well in Chilean society. I was feeling stressed, very depressed and unhappy. But luckily I didn’t want to settle in conformism and I found the strength to pursue expansion, happiness and fulfilment for myself. Every trip I did on vacation before I decided to leave Chile, showed me new horizons and possibilities, and they had the effect of motivating me to keep going and keep searching for a way to liberate myself from the pressures of fitting in that mold that wasn’t designed for me.
I finished my studies in one of the most prestigious Universities in Chile just because that was what I was supposed to do. But I wasn’t happy and a call that was loud and clear, I didn’t want to be in front of a computer for the rest of my life and consumed by a stressful job. I needed to start my own search for happiness, so I applied to a very special school of acting and theatrical creation and got in. It was one of the most transformative experiences of my life. It was there where I learned to see the world with a different perspective, I reconnected with my inner child, I discovered my potential, increased my self esteem and learned to be disciplined, to work hard, to be a team player, but I also learned to stand for myself and seize every moment and opportunity, among many other wonderful tools for life. It was hard but absolutely worth it. I didn’t know at the time but, those two intense years in “La Mancha, International School of Image and Gesture” was what I needed to be ready for the biggest discovery in my life: BIKRAM YOGA.
