On Wednesday I attended my first yoga teacher training class and walked into a room with 31 women and 2 men. If I thought healthcare was dominated by women, yoga teacher training takes the female-to-male ratio to the next power. It heightens my feelings of insecurity and that nagging voice in my head suddenly takes center stage and hijacks a megaphone:
• Check out all that back fat in the mirror, honey. When are you gonna
lose those ten pounds?
• Paint your damn toenails!
• Get some new yoga clothes – you look like a bum!
• Get some sleep – you look like a zombie from Thriller!
• You’re almost 35. Don’t you think it’s time you got your acne under control?
• This is a class for yogis. Babe, you can’t do headstand or sidecrow.
What are you doing here?
All I can do is take a few deep breaths and trust that the next eight weeks will be a helluva lot more than who looks hottest in their Lululemons and who’s yoga practice is more perfect. This isn’t high school. It’s a room full of people who, for one reason or another, came together on February 15, 2012 to commit to an eight-week yoga teacher training class at CorePower Yoga. Surely, we have more than enough sense, strength, and support to lift each other up.
Putting that nagging voice on mute and breaking out of my introverted shell may be the biggest challenges I’ll have to overcome over the next eight weeks. It certainly helps, though, when the training expectations implore every one of us to practice non-judgment, let go of our expectations, and – for the love – be humble and learn from ourselves. Let’s see where the next eight weeks take us.
Yoga on, my friends.
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1 comments:
We are all on a journey...everyone for a different reason. In my teacher training I found myself thinking, OMG I'm with a bunch of stay at home moms with nothing better to do and girls in their early 20s (I'm 34) that don't know what it means to have a comfortable lifestyle and decent income. Man was I wrong, these are all people and they have found yoga and want to bring yoga to others, what's the harm in that? I had to let go of my jealousy that they might be in a better position to be good yoga instructors cause they could commit the time. I'm not about to quit my day job either and very comfortable income that allows me to have a few of the finer things in life. I teach yoga for free because I want to, because I think everyone needs yoga and I want to help them find what I've found. We don't need to have a perfect asana practice to start letting the benefits of yoga seep into our daily lives, we just have to trust that we are where we need to be...on our own journey.
Thank you for writing...and if you ever want to practice your sequence (it just takes practice and time) I'm also in South Minneapolis, often found at the airport dog park or teaching free yoga in my basement.
-Haley
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