Deep inhale . . . deeeeeep exhale! As of Wednesday, November 18 at 9:30 p.m., I successfully completed my yoga teacher training! Thank you for supporting my efforts, reading my blog, cheering me on, sending me inspirational emails, not rolling your eyes when I spoke about how to achieve a super-terrific downward facing dog, and just being supportive!

My final was on Wednesday night and I felt fantastic all day! I was confident of the sequences that we've been learning and felt that I had already "arrived". That was, until I started driving to the studio to take the final, of course! My breath grew shallow with each mile I drove, and by the time I got to the studio, I was practically hyperventillating. (An exaggeration, but I want you to get the picture of how much of a basket-case I had become!)

I walked into the studio greeted by 43 other just-as-nervous teachers in training. As I tried to appear calm, cool, and collected, I took a sip of my vitamin water while gasping for air and choked on it! (NOT an exaggeration - this really happened!) I coughed and choked and tryed to regain my composure. After 5 minutes of continuous coughing if finally got it back, and we all met up in one of the two studios at the South Boulder CorePower. We divided up into 2 groups and were assigned a partner.

I conducted a full class to my partner, Nicole, in a room full of 11 other people doing the same thing. I was not as distracted as I thought I'd be, and got right into the flow. Five different CorePower teachers came around and watched us, writing feedback in our notebooks as we taught the sequence. After I got through the entire flow (about 45 minutes worth of teaching) I got to read my feedback and get verbal feedback from Nicole. It was all really positive and I felt really good about it! I was handed my certificate and I just couldn't believe it was all over. After Nicole taught her class to me, we all gathered back in the main studio and recalled what a fast 8 weeks it had been. Lots of people made plans to stay in touch and keep practicing on one another. It was a bitter-sweet ending to an amazing 2 months. Wow. Still can't believe it.

Wondering what my next move is going to be? Stay tuned . . . you'll be hearing from me!

Love and Namaste (the teacher and light in me honors the teacher and light in you),

Cindy

Bringing Yoga to Life

How can it be that I am already in my final week of yoga teacher training? I remember our instructor telling us in the first week to take it all in because it would go fast, but I didn't realize just HOW fast! This coming Wednesday, we will be taking our "final" where we teach a level 1 class all the way through, and then, we are sent off into the world to teach!

Our group is becoming a bit melancholy about the fact that we are coming to the end of our training. Despite the fact that there are 44 of us, we've had the opportunity to see glimpses into one another's lives - hearing each other voice fears and frustrations, celebrating successes, listening to one another practice-teach, and just hanging out during the breaks and getting a deeper perspective into each other's lives.

It's kind of funny to think back how anxious I was the day before the first session - being afraid of not connecting with anyone, wondering if I could get through the entire eight weeks without crashing, and wondering what kind of person I would become in the process. As I look through my notes now and see all of the topics we've covered, from postures, to the flow sequence and cues, to anatomy, the cadaver lab, adjustments and alignment, chakras, Sanskrit and so much more, I feel like a changed person.

I've stepped onto a new path of change - one that I hope will allow me to be more open to people, less judgemental, more loving, less critical. I've definitely come to the realization that yoga has become such a wonderful "cocoon" in my life - a place that I can go to strengthen my mind, body, and spirit in an effort to bring it to my daily life. This is the challenge - to take what I've learned and bring it to life. That is the next step.

Running from the Wall

It's hard for me to believe, but we've just completed week 5 of teacher training. The time is flying by! Last Monday, after Saturday's cadaver lab and Sunday's alignment/adjustment workshop, I was physically and mentally drained. I came home on Sunday night exhausted, and woke up Monday morning not extremely excited about trudging off to my morning yoga class. When I did get to the studio, the instructor asked how teacher training was going and when I explained my exhaustion, she asked, "oh, so have you hit the wall?" The wall. The "all-yoga-all-the-time" wall. I guess I didn't really think about this, but I know that some of the other teachers in training have been talking about having difficulty making it to the studio and keeping up with the homework. There is so much information that is thrown at you, but up to now, I feel that it has been pretty manageable - on one hand because I love it so much, and on the other, because I know that I only have 8 weeks to dedicate to my training before they dub me a certified trainer.

It seemed as if "the hair of the dog" (taking yet another yoga class that Monday morning) seemed to do the trick for me and I was back on track. To add to my recovery time, our Wednesday night class was cancelled due to the snow storm. This allowed me to get some additional practice time in (thank you, Tom!) and let everything from the last week really sink in.

This past weekend, we finished going through the remainder of the C1 class series and had some additional instruction in Sanskrit. A few of my fellow teachers-in-training and I met a little earlier on Sunday so that we could practice-teach on one another. Our final is on the 18th where we will teach an entire class, so everyone is starting to get a little nervous.

I am looking forward to allowing everything to crystallize for me in the next couple of weeks. I feel comfortable teaching the class so far, and I'm actually looking forward to the final. Weird. That feeling might change as we get closer, but like any public speaking task, you must put in the practice time in order to be confident about the delivery.

The other night, I woke up to find myself talking through supine twist and actually doing the pose! So, to say that I am doing yoga in my sleep is a literal statement. Crazy. Thanks to everyone for your support and putting up with all of my yoga-ness. Namaste!

An Amazing Vessel

To say that I was a little anxious about the cadaver lab this weekend would have been an understatement. While I was excited about the fact that I even had the opportunity to more closely explore the human body, I was equally filled with angst about how I would handle it. Not really knowing what I would see or how I would react was quite challenging. Walking into the lab just compounded the anxiety. The main lecture area was lined with desks facing a chalkboard inscribed with various terms including sacro iliac ligament, scapula, sacrum and more, but it was what I saw in the back of the room that made me a little uneasy. A white body bag and two shiny, 6-foot long chrome storage containers didn't even begin to tell the story about what we were going to be discovering over the next few hours.


The lab director was amazing. He spent the first 45 minutes making us feel comfortable and talking to us about the amazing people who take the time to sign up to be body donors. They allow students like us to experience the human body first hand so we can better comprehend all of its complexities in order to help others. We were given the opportunity to observe 3 cadavers, whom out of respect for the person, the lab director gave names and not numbers.


Donning white lab coats and gloves, we were given the opportunity to experience, up close and personal, the amazing vessel in which we abide. I held a uterus, many bones, and a human brain. I got to feel a bundle of spinal cords, hold kidneys, and see how a pace maker is attached. I learned how you can determine whether someone has given birth (by the shape of the opening in the floor of the uterus), how the gaps in the brain's cavity tell the story of Alzheimer's, and how great yoga is (just like weight lifting) for building bone density.


The human body is just so amazing. I'll never look at it quite the same way again, and any anxiety I had at the beginning of class was replaced with true appreciation for this amazing vessel that we have been given.

Make Me a Channel

I have entered into week 4 of my yoga teacher training journey and feel as if I never want it to end. Every new thing I learn, every new person I meet, and every new experience I have, brings more joy to my life. I see the world a little differently. While so much of the teacher training focuses on anatomy, poses, sequences and cues, so much more of it gets into the deeper lessons of living a life of joy and abundance. It's about reaping what you sow and living in a way that doesn't cause harm to others. It's about always working towards patience, contentedness, kindness, non-judgement, and love. I'm definitely not there, but this journey so far has opened my eyes to ways that I can become a better person so that I can serve others. Funny, that was the same message we got from Father Peter last weekend at mass. He said, "When in doubt, serve." Great advice.

A Prayerful Practice

When I decided to commit myself to yoga teacher training, there was a small critical voice that kept raising the question about how my training might somehow interfere with my spiritual beliefs. It felt as if Eastern and Western religions might clash in a way that could possibly force me to remove yoga from my life in order to choose God.

I had always spent the early days of my yoga practice in deep prayer. I found my practice to be a perfect opportunity to just be with God. Setting out on my teacher training path made me wonder if I would be taught something different from the yoga practice I had come to love. This weekend, I was amazed by how much God was infused in the training. Here are a few things that came up:

• On Saturday, we learned about the seven chakras - physical places in your body that embody specific energy. In the book, "Anatomy of the Spirit", author Carolyn Myss, Ph.D. explores the connection between the 7 chakras and the seven sacraments and how people must pass through these stages in the search for higher consciousness and spiritual maturity.


• In our C2 yoga class on Sunday morning, our instructor started out with a meditation on the Prayer of St. Francis.


• I was thumbing through another book that was being passed around, and there was a beautiful writing that I'll share with you here. It read:

God

The Immovable Mover

The One

behind all events in the cosmos

is the still point

around which

everything revolves,

because He is still

with peace of love

and yet

dancing eternally

in everything that exists.

- Harish Johari

So, yoga for me has become all the more a spiritual practice, "for in Him we live and move and have our being." - Acts 17:28.

Namaste!

Getting Out of My Head

After this morning's yoga class, I noticed that the class itself is different for me now than it was before I started teacher training. It used to be that when I was practicing yoga in class, and for many hours after class, I found myself in a blissful state - just flowing through the movements, allowing my mind-body-spirit connection to take place. That's why I love yoga so much. Class has become a lot different for me now, though. I find myself in my head a lot during class, listening for cues more than listening to my breath . . . thinking about what the next pose is going to be instead of fully engaging in the current pose . . . and wondering how I will lead my class similarly or differently from the teacher who is guiding the class, instead of just being guided. It just made me realize even more how much I love practicing yoga, and more importantly, why I love it. Pure bliss. How exciting it is to me that one day I might be able to bring that awareness to someone else.

2 Weeks Down!

2 weeks of yoga teacher training down, and 6 more to go! Wednesday night was all about anatomy and how the bones, muscles, and joints support the body and support the yoga postures we've been learning. I completed my anatomy assignments alongside Kenzie and Taylor as they did their homework. It feels good to be learning new things.

I developed a nasty cold towards the end of the week, and opted to stay home from class on Saturday and rest up. It was a good day to do that, since class time was only a couple of hours long, and I was able to do the syllabus work from home. Sunday was a long day - I left the house at 7 a.m. to go to mass in Boulder, and then got to the yoga studio at 9:30 to take the sculpt class. As we began, we were asked to "set our intention" for the class, and mine was just to "get through it" since I had been sick for the last couple of days. The class was packed mat-to-mat and the temperatures sky-rocketed as we held our weights and pumped through the sequences. The class ended up being awesome, and I think I sweated out any remaining sickness that I had! The remainder of the day (through 5 p.m.) was spent in a chanting clinic and then breaking down the balancing series of poses. We had the opportunity to do some practice teaching towards the end. There are so many sequences and cues to learn, but I think I get better each time. Afterwards, I had dinner over at my folks' (who had taken the kids overnight & through the day) and we were home just after 7. A long 12-hour day, but it was a great one!

Inhale . . . exhale.

Almost my entire weekend, including my thoughts, movements, actions, intentions and breaths was centered around yoga. I spent a half day on Saturday and 9-5 on Sunday in teacher training. Waking up on Saturday morning, it seemed as if I had a very long weekend ahead of me. But it flew by.

As we went through the first three asanas (flows) of yoga: integration, Sun Salutation A and Sun Salutation B, I began to develop a brand new, eyes-wide-open awareness of yoga. Translating the movements I know so well into specific, flowing verbal cues has been tricky, but by the end of the day on Sunday, I was instructing my small group of four through these ansanas.

When I got home on Sunday night, my three yogis allowed me to lead them through the series. Taylor couldn't stop giggling through it as he heard me pronounce the Sanskrit names for the various poses, Tom followed carefully and mindfully through the flow, and my best yogi, Kenzie, flowed through the asanas like a pro. She has the upper hand, of course, since she goes to yoga with me once a week.

One of the key points this weekend was learning how to lead a class in flowing through the asanas with inhales and exhales. The breath facilitates being "present" in the moment. Try it some time when you are stressed - close your eyes, and take deep inhales and exhales through your nose. It is amazing how your breath energizes every cell in your body and leaves your mind and spirit feeling refreshed and ready to go. I'm ready to go on to week 2!

Teacher Training - Day 1

I spent much of Wednesday looking at the clock, counting the hours and minutes until the beginning of my first yoga teacher training class. Just before class, I sat in on Taylor's guitar lesson. He was learning how to play a couple of Green Day songs and was really getting the hang of it. Every time he missed a note, his instructor told him that no one is perfect, and since he is playing an entire song - and not just a series of notes - he should play the song through and make no apologies for a missed note. Just play on. That was in my head as I got to class, and felt the nervous tension in the room of over 40 yoga teacher wanna-bes. Soon, we were all getting comfortable, making introductions, and learning the "Integration Series" of yoga movements - a series of relaxation postures that allows a person to connect mind and body, leaving their internal chatter behind.

We were given the opportunity to "practice teach" in small groups, and I soon realized how difficult it was to communicate posture cues even when you've heard them so many times in class, given by other instructors. Transforming what you want your class to do in a way that makes complete sense and flows with the breath is not as easy as it looks. Our leader told us to cross out the word "sorry" in our minds. If we slip up, don't give the right cue, or struggle to figure out the next one, don't apologize. Just move through it. It was so much like what Taylor's guitar instructor told him, and I told Taylor this morning that I learned the very same lesson in my class. I'm excited to work through my "yoga song" and get better with each class. Next classes are on Saturday and Sunday, so stay tuend!

The First Step

Well, I've done it. After a back-and-forth struggle of "what's next" options, the planets aligned and catapulted me into a new realm of my life experience - yoga teacher training. Why yoga? Why 8 weeks of demanding teacher training? Why now? The questions have no definite answers at the moment, only the promise of an adventure that is sure to challenge me at new levels. I'm excited and petrified at the same time. As I consider the challenges ahead, I also think about the benefits. No matter what happens, I'm certain to gain new insights, new acquaintances, and perhaps a refined body as well. This prompted me to record my measurements and weight and see what effect the next 8 weeks has on my physical body. There are certain to be changes to my mental and spiritual awareness, as I've already seen those effects after having practiced yoga for over a year. One week and counting until the transformation begins.