MyLifeYoga

Vinnie Marino

Vinnie Marino grew up in the 1960s in New York. He was naturally drawn to yoga and practiced it in his teens. But in high school he also found drugs and his yoga practice fell away. His downward spiral continued when he dropped out of college and moved to San Francisco. His first week in San Francisco he was “introduced to shooting cocaine”. On his web site he says, “Enlightenment doesn’t come that easily. Experimenting with chemicals to find different levels of consciousness ultimately left me trapped. The freedom I found from drugs became a prison.”

In his late twenties Vinnie decided to break free from his addiction. He started cleaning up his act and began working out at a gym and jogging around a park. It worked and soon he found himself sober. When he moved to LA in the early 90s he found his way back to yoga. He found that yoga had changed from the one he practiced in school. This new yoga was hot, sweaty, hard, and intense. He loved it, and he felt energized and alive. He found relief and release in yoga. There was now no need to head back to the life of drugs he had left behind.

Soon he was doing yoga every day of the week. Then he took teacher training at Santa Barbara at White Lotus to increase his knowledge of yoga. Here he discovered that he had ways to go both in his yoga expertise and knowledge of the yoga system. Amazed at how much he was learning he subsequently took up an advanced teacher-training program in Iyengar Yoga. Continue reading →

The first day of school our professor introduced himself and challenged us to get to know someone we didn’t already know. I stood up to look around when a gentle hand touched my shoulder.

I turned around to find a wrinkled, little old lady beaming up at me with a smile that lit up her entire being. She said, “Hi handsome. My name is Rose. I’m eighty-seven years old. Can I give you a hug?”

I laughed and enthusiastically responded, “Of course you may!” and she gave me a giant squeeze.

Why are you in college at such a young, innocent age?” I asked. She jokingly replied, “I’m here to meet a rich husband, get married, and have a couple of kids…”

“No seriously,” I asked. I was curious what may have motivated her to be taking on this challenge at her age.

“I always dreamed of having a college education and now I’m getting one!” she told me.

After class we walked to the student union building and shared a chocolate milkshake. We became instant friends. Every day for the next three months we would leave class together and talk nonstop. I was always mesmerized listening to this “time machine” as she shared her wisdom and experience with me.

Over the course of the year, Rose became a campus icon and she easily made friends wherever she went. She loved to dress up and she reveled in the attention bestowed upon her from the other students. She was living it up.

At the end of the semester we invited Rose to speak at our football banquet. Continue reading →