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!