I’ve always been hesitant to tell people of my very first chance encounter with yoga, mostly because it’s largely based on my unreliable memory of being 5, or 6, or 7 (you see my point).

As I mentioned in my yoga journey, I randomly found a book with yoga poses on the book shelf in the house that I grew up in. I did what kids do: I immitated the illustrations, then I forgot all about it and moved on. Something more interesting probably came along.

I recently received a copy of Yogi Bare: Naked Truth from America’s Leading Yoga Teachers, and reading the interview of Rod Stryker struck me (ha) with a chill in my spine. He mentioned that he had a mystical introduction to yoga. He was five years old, pulling a book off the shelf at his granduncle’s house. It was a yoga book.

Now, I don’t know if I would call my experience “mystical”. Maybe it was just a random incident, happening without cause and effect. Besides, I don’t really know for sure if it really happened, or if my brain created a nice memory for me to complete the story now that I have found my passion.

But maybe it doesn’t matter if there was divine intervention or just dumb luck, and whether it happened or not. My brother and I often amuse ourselves with Russian Reversal one-liners, and one is called for here: sometimes, we don’t find yoga. Yoga finds us.