Where does the yoga journey begin?

A student asked me this question recently, and it has stayed with me, fostering a great deal of thought on the subject.

Does it begin with the first class you take? Or when you first think about taking that class? Does it begin at birth? Is there even a starting point? If you decide to stop taking classes or having a home practice, is that the end of your yoga journey?

I think of yoga as a river, flowing from a source we cannot see and moving toward an end we cannot know. The moment we put our feet in the water for the first time, we realize we are joining something already in progress. Even if another person were to enter the stream at exactly the same point, it’s not the same river anymore. Water has flowed past and new water is passing by each second. The river I experience is a different river from the one you experience, and yet it is the same river.

Yoga has a long history that came before us and is flowing all around us. Each of us steps into the river at a unique place, joining the flow with a distinctly individual perspective. In this sense the journey has no beginning and no end, only an expanding and deepening awareness of the movement of life.