"The Halman Does Yoga!"

This morning I 'rehearsed' our yoga class with Harry (aka The Halman!) It is a perfect start for me. He has never practiced yoga before, so my wording and directions had to be very accurate. He enjoyed the class I gave him and he thinks I'm a good teacher. (Actually he said I was 'great' but he doesn't really know any different!) I'm getting more confidence. I'm sure I'll be ready for Yoga Day...

Teaching again...

Well,I'm jumping in again, but this time it's in a good way. On January 23rd the studio is celebrating Yoga Day. They will be offering free yoga classes all day. Lori offered us a chance to begin our teaching on that day to get our feet wet. I volunteered before I knew what hit me! Yesterday she worked with 5 of us at the studio to compose a class and present. It's much harder than it looks. The class will be about an hour so each one of us will teach for about 12 minutes. The longest 12 minutes you could imagine! This morning I'm going to practice on Harry. He's NEVER practiced yoga before so it will be a real test to how clear my directions are. The whole thing is a bit scary to me, but I knew that if I didn't take advantage of the opportunity I would regret it later on.I remember my senior year of high school and Bye Bye Birdie... I auditioned and made the cut as one of the dancers. A few days into the rehearsals I thought it was just too much work and it interfered with time with my friends (ugh!)so I quit. I quit!!! Could you imagine? I was soooooo miserable the night of the performance when the show was so fabulous, the costumes so adorable, and I was not one of those dancers on the stage. What a fool!!! I don't want that feeling again. Funny ~ I haven't thought of that in almost 40 years until this morning. Yikes!

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...

Ouch, the Bandhas...

It's now Monday evening and I continue to recover from my weekend of training. My hips are screaming and I'm sore in places that I didn't know that I had! I've learned that having success in the asanas (postures, poses) is dependent on engaging the Bandhas and holding in the belly (by the way, the Bandhas are below that!) Well, picture this ~ there I was trying so desperately to get my body in a posture while trying to "keep the breath," AND engage the Bandhas??? Something had to let go. You guessed it ~ it was the Bandhas! Our homework is to practice engaging the Bandhas everyday for about 10 minutes. Speaking of homework, I have quite a bit to accomplish for next month ~ many pages of anatomy reading, the anatomy coloring book, find an inspirational story or quote, formulate a sequence of two standing postures including breath work and the first 16 Sutras. I'll have no problem doing all of it, I'll just have a problem REMEMBERING all of it! Better get to work...

The Yoga Sutras

I'm on my way to the Saturday all day training in about 1/2 hour. Last night was the lecture on The Yoga Sutras with Satyam. He's a very engaging speaker and the 2 hours flew by. My concern is the lack of retention this old brain of mine has! Holy cow! It's so hard to make sense of all of it. I am such a global thinker and learner so that when given details it's more difficult for me to paint the whole picture. I like seeing what the picture looks like first and then filling it in with all the rich details. No one else seems to be having this problem, or else they're hiding it well. I'm sure they don't know my secret. I 'hmmm' when everyone else does, I giggle when everyone else does, and I 'wow' when everyone else does. Harry, my dear husband (that's sarcastic!) is convinced I have a form of ADD. The basis for his conclusion is that although I appear to be so engaged and interested when he talks to me while making serious eye contact, when given a quiz later in the day on his discourse I have no idea what he is referring to! I call that something else, he calls it ADD!

Back to the Sutras ~ I think I'll have to commit to an hour of review every day. My new mantra ~ I can do it! I can do it! I can do it!

Namaste...

Sigh...

It's been really hard to practice yoga as much as I thought I would. I'm still not confident enough to do it on my own, although Sara suggested I practice every day, even if only for 10 minutes. It is my nature to have everything set up perfectly before I practice ~ the room, the candles, the mat set up, the right clothes, etc. I feel a bit like Ed Norton from The Honeymooners! Then after all the prep something comes up to distract me. It all has to do with settling the mind...............

First Lecture...

Well, Friday night was the first lecture. It was great, I just loved being a student again. From now on I will record the lectures. I'm so out of practice, my notes are all over the place! There are some very interesting people in the class who have been practicing yoga since the 70's. For those of us who were 'of age' in the 70's let me tell you that it was not easy to find a yoga class back then. Yoga hadn't come to the United States until the late 60's! The man doing the lecture is Satyam. He's very passionate and very knowledgeable. I know I'm going to come out of this training a different person.

On Saturday I went to a wedding and had to miss the first full day. I was disappointed, but I did what was right. I'm anxious to make it up, I don't want to miss a thing!