Today i woke up a yoga teacher in training. To many people this means nothing - hell, you can get certified to teach yoga online in a few hours. But not I. I was never one for on-line classes, I was never one for mediocre education in general. This is the first time, in a life full of constant learning, reading, travel... that I've felt this thirst for knowledge. A desire to excel at a lifestyle that has enveloped me. A lifestyle that IS me. As of now, I still feel like an outsider. And over the future months, I will make a transition to truth.
I've always embodied facets of yoga. I slept in frog pose from the womb until my teens. My earliest memories are doing the splits at the age of three or so. And then there was ballet through the age of 16 - yoga was a part of my training. There was cheerleading and high jumping and hurdling along the way. And the largest hurdle of all, was injury.
Two back surgeries down (one resulting from a ballet injury and congenital stenosis, and the other from a motorcycle accident in college) I had to find something that my body could do without excessive impact or harm. I ran a half marathon and a sprint triathlon - I developed a love for the sport of squash. And all the while, as a means of 'stretching' - I would do a bit of yoga.
My first introduction to Power Yoga was on accident. I was sick of all the 'easy' yoga classes and dvd's I found locally in my Ohio hometown, so i recall going online about six years ago and doing an Amazon search for "Advanced Yoga". I used to be a ballet dancer and felt that the basics were "too easy for me". Although I respected the foundation, I just wanted to know what else was out there, something that would humble me as a flexible and strong athlete. I ordered a DVD called Tripsichore Yoga (advanced vinyasa). I recall attempting to complete the practice in my ex-boyfriend's living room - I also recall falling onto a glass coffee table. He was reading on the couch while I flailed around the room.
Flailing is never a good term to describe your yoga practice.
I put the DVD away and it's dusty to this day. I forgot about it until I wrote this. I am tempted to try it out again now - and see if I still flail, or if my practice has improved that considerably.
Until I moved back to Austin (from Ohio), yoga was just a hobby or fitness class. I got more serious at times, I took some ballet classes again, and then I'd focus on running or kickboxing, and then I'd stop working out and focus on trying to fix something else in my life - relationships, career, it was all a series of phases.
I moved back to Austin about a year ago after ending a 5-year relationship and a subsequently bad rebound, loosing my job (which was a huge part of my identity) - I left my family and friends and moved back to Austin where I'd attended college to become a Graphic Designer. On my first day back went to a newly opened donation studio. I was hooked. Yoga was exactly what I needed to bring me out of the unhealthy place I was in, and into a new light.
Change isn't immediate. I had to work to repair myself. To end a mass of unhealthy habits that I had acquired in times of stress or as fake-happiness. I still work to expell poisons from my life daily. Judgement, ego, lust, gossip, chemicals, fried food. But my practice grew as I worked on change. I tried vinyasa, power vinyasa, hatha, kundalini, ashtanga, and then bikram.
I did Bikram religiously for 6 months. Bikram allowed me to learn what meditation was. It forced me to sincerely leave my problems at the door and focus soley on myself and my practice for 90 minutes. It made me humble. It made me want to go further in the yogic lifestyle.
So it was about at that point where I made a clear effort to stop "faking the yogic way". Practicing 4 or so times a week, and then binging on the weekend and focusing on my social life. And also when I decided to make "my plan". I want to teach. I want to have my own studio. I want to provide to others the practice and the way that has changed, and is changing me.
So I made a committment to a 200-hour Power Vinyasa Teacher Training at Breath and Body Yoga in austin. I've only been to one 4-hour class but the group seems incredible and my instructor is like a carbon copy of me and what I would embody myself as in 15 years. This blog will serve as a tool for me to record my journey - my thoughts - challenges. I will use it to track class structures and record tools to use in the future. I hope that it will be of interest and a resource for other people who are on this journey, would aspire to do it, or have done it in the past and would like to help me and others.
Namaste!
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