About Mason Bendixen
Born in Hawaii, my family relocated to my parent's native home of Utah when I was still a toddler. I spent the next twenty years of my life living Utah where I obtained a bachelor's degree in computer science and gained a great appreciation of the outdoors and fitness.
Always having loved the Pacific Northwest, I happily accepted a software engineer position and relocated to Washington in 1999.
My love of fitness led me to seek out weight lifting, Pilates, and a number of other physical activities. After several years of extreme activity, I was a mess. My feet hurt so much that I ended up seeing different doctor's, podiatrists, and then tried physical therapy. A physical therapist had me lay on a table on my side and tried to keep me from lifting my thigh up. He couldn't budge it. We switched to the other side and a tap of his finger could knock my leg down. It was freaky! His diagnosis was that I had a locked SI joint. A couple of weeks of work fixed the issue, but he was concerned that I had a general alignment issue. He suggested yoga.
Honestly, I didn't know what yoga was. I thought it involved lots of stretching and people holding hands and chanting. I was scared before my first yoga class.
My experience was not at all what I thought it would be. Yoga was hard. Really hard. I sweated and worked muscles that I didn't know I had. It was a humbling experience.
Years later, yoga is still challenging, but the progress is encouraging. When I first started, if I bent forward my hands barely reached my knees. Now, I can fold with straight legs and touch my palms to the floor. I've had similar results through most of my ranges of motion, but I have also become much stronger.
The exciting thing about yoga, is that it has opened up new possibilites for me to try things like my current passion: aerial dance / circus performing.
