December training...

Well, as you can see by the photo, the weekend started off just fine. There is Lori adjusting me in triangle. It's a pretty good lookin' triangle if I must say so myself ~ my heart is open, and I don't see any flab under my neck! This was the best part of the weekend.

Right after this photo was shot we did our first full Ashtanga practice and went through the entire primary series. WOW! It was so tough for me. I knew it would be, but I didn't know that I would feel as emotional as I did. I had heard that yoga could stir up a lot of emotional junk, but I never really understood until now. I willed myself to not cry. I felt like I was in a yoga practice for the first time, and here I was in a teacher training! It seemed like I didn't belong anymore. I was in the second row and all the yoga 'stars' were in the front row, so I felt especially yucky because it seemed that everyone was accomplishing things that I couldn't. I also knew that after our break we were going to start practicing the inversions ~ translations: headstand! My biggest fear and another thing I can't do ~ (YET!~that's what they keep telling me anyway!)It just felt so much like high school gym to me, it was hard. Everyone was very supportive, but I just wanted to do things that they were all doing. Now mind you, not everyone is so accomplished in Ashtanga and even the "stars" couldn't get through everything in the practice, that's how hard it is, but I still couldn't help but feel that I was too old, too chubby, too inflexible to ever be successful at this. Now my rational mind knows that yoga, REAL yoga has nothing to do with any of this, but in the moment it was hard to deal. When I got home, I dragged myself in the house, took two Advil and a hot shower and ate some dinner silently. Poor Harry kept saying, "But you're supposed to LOVE this, what happened?" I couldn't talk about it until Sunday morning. Then I had to face another whole day. There is another woman in the class who feels very much like I do, so we're kind of in it together. I met her last night in class and she said, "When did I get so old? I'm going to erase that talk right out of my head!" She's right of course. I'm going to take a page out of her book and do the same. I did drag my sore body to class Monday morning and I went to Lori's 3 star class last night. She was much more brave and went to the Ashtanga class! I need to feed my ego a little bit more before I do that. I am feeling better now. Time to get 'back in the saddle' again. What's life without challenges? Pretty boring...