My First Understanding of God, and Myself
In my healing journey, I’ve also come face to face with my spiritual journey. And I think that could be scary for a lot of us, who had good reasons to stray from religion. I grew up “culturally” Catholic, not really going to church consistently, but raised around it. As a baby, I was baptized. I did religious study classes as an 8 year old preparing for First Communion. Everyone in my family is Catholic and married a Catholic. I was generally surrounded by a lot of Catholics growing up in Miami. The phrase “Catholic guilt” runs deep. In combination with Latino culture, where guilt is handed down like a family tradition, it really affirmed my position of being wildly insecure and constantly pushing myself to be more.
From a young age, I’ve been introspective. I carried empathy when I would hear sad stories. I was self-aware of how my presence impacted others. And I love these things about myself. But what happens when introspection snowballs into letting fear guide my decision-making? What happens when empathy knows no boundaries and I feel guilty for even being happy when there’s so much suffering? What happens when self-awareness causes self-nitpicking, analyzing every part of a conversation that I have with others, wondering if they still like me?
These amazing qualities about myself morphed into my biggest problems I had to address, when I fell in love with somebody that wasn’t right for me but what I thought I deserved for being imperfect, when I was heartbroken by somebody else that promised everything I ever wanted from a relationship, and finally, when I met the most amazing, self-possessed person that challenges my new perspective on self-love.
My Yoga and Spiritual Journey
My healing journey really started for me in late January 2024. By this point, I was already committed to the physical practice of yoga in studio for 2 years. It was making me feel good, clearing my head, and giving me something to do that wasn’t working from home. And then in July 2024, I started my yoga teacher training. It dipped me into yogic philosophy. I began to learn the “why” behind practicing yoga physically. The philosophy spelled out why I felt so good. I didn’t know how to explain it in my own words before.
When training ended, I felt accomplished, but I also still felt like I was right at the beginning. And I knew I needed more. I kept buying books on ThriftBooks (we love discounted used books!) to the point that I now have a collection I will be working on and combing through for years to come.
The first book I was drawn to was Yoga for Depression by Amy Weintraub because of my wondering about my own and my loved ones’ relationship with depression. (Check out the Green Marble Yoga library to learn more about this and other recommended books.)
And it got me thinking, what are the societal teachings that led me to be so riddled with insecurities? It made me go over my childhood and adolescence, figure out where I was hearing these messages. My parents are still happily married. They were generally supportive of us growing up, minus a blip in my middle and high school years. I knew it wasn’t all them. I have great memories of feeling loved by them and my aunts and uncles and cousins. And yet, I was still so engrained with guilt.
And then I realized, some of it had to do with the religion we were raised with. Yoga teaches us something very important—that we don’t get reminded in studio spaces. Mostly because people are coming in for a workout. Maybe for the fear that it comes off as exclusive or offensive to people who are deeply practicing their religion. Yoga teaches us that we are connected to something greater and that we should be cultivating this connection often and consistently.
That spiritual part of me was limited, or blocked off, because I didn’t think that was an important part of living a happy life. I knew I could be moral without religion, so why couldn’t I be happy without it too? I saw so many examples of Catholic people who are full of judgment for people different than them, even to the point of harm. Consequently, God just didn’t seem like something I wanted to be around at all, if that’s what it meant. Follow the rules, or God sends you to Hell. It didn’t fit with me.
Then I started reading more about the Yogic, Buddhist, and Taoist perspectives on God, Divine Power, the Universe, the Higher Power. Whatever you’d like to name it, it started to make more sense to me.
My Newfound Connection to God
I do not have to prove my worthiness of my connection to God by praying a certain way or giving up certain things. Yoga has taught me that I am inherently worthy. I am born with a connection to the Divine. I am born with Divinity inside me. The Divine Light in me honors the Divine Light in you. God lives in everyone and everything. The perspective shift lined up everything for me.
The qualities I loved about myself, but went off the rails, could finally come back in balance. My introspection shouldn’t lead me to indecisiveness or fear of ever taking a risk, it should lead me to a place where I can quietly study myself and then let it go because I can’t control all of the outcomes of my decisions and I surely can’t control anyone’s perspective of me but my own.
My empathy shouldn’t lead me to feeling guilty for being happy, it should hold boundaries because when I’m happy and my cup is filled, I am more useful to people suffering by sharing my light. And my self-awareness shouldn’t lead me to being hard on myself and striving for perfection, it should be considered as my gift that I can observe my emotions and choose to react differently so that I can serve myself and others from a more loving place.
What I love about Yoga is that it doesn’t seek to change you, but it gives you a new perspective. The qualities you hold can hurt or help you. There’s balance, instead of extremes. In Catholicism, I felt that it was always one thing or another, black or white, Heaven or Hell, Good or Evil, one God and nothing else Divine. It didn’t work for my head, because I so often work in middles. I so often think in the thousands of shades of gray in between. And I knew for sure that there was something Divine about being at the beach, or in the mountains, or in the desert.
Yoga offered me a different way to reconnect to the Divine. Without knowing, the poses, connection to breath, and physical sensations were providing me a tangible way to sense God’s presence within myself. Yoga teaches that the body itself is sacred and can be a channel for experiencing God’s energy. With more devotion and reading of Yoga, I’ve come to know that Yoga embraces that God is within each of us. It is around us in animals and inanimate things too, and above us and below us and radiating all around us.
Practicing Yoga asana (asana is the Sanskrit word for “pose”) is a tangible way to connect our physical form to the metaphysical connection we have with the Higher Powers. Catholicism often emphasizes devotion through prayer, sacraments, and worship, which can sometimes feel like an obligation. Yoga, on the other hand, is more about relationship—offering practices that allow you to approach God without expectation or pressure. This can give you the space to discover your relationship with the Divine on your own terms, through stillness, movement, or reflection.
I admire people that have served others in the name of their religion. There is a lot of good that comes with a connection to God, despite the rules humans set for ourselves. But I found freedom knowing that God is with me always. It opens my heart allowing myself to heal. I am more patient and compassionate. It inspires me to see beauty in every single thing around me. This freedom has made me happy.
I do not have to prove my worthiness, because Yoga has taught me that I am inherently worthy. I do not have to prove that God loves me, because I love me, and God is within me. I do not have to prove that I love myself, because I love God, and God is within me.