On Sept 16th, I emailed Natalie, one of two instructors doing the training, and confirmed that I was in. The next weekend session (I had missed the first) would be Sept. 29-30.
I needed to meet with Natalie to get caught up on what I’d missed in August. We met at a coffee shop one morning after I dropped the kids off at school. The day before, their school had been evacuated because of a bomb threat and students were returning that morning. My mind was a bit jittery because of that, and all of the things that go with being a parent in the age of school shootings.
Natalie is such a babe. She’s younger than me, quite strikingly beautiful on the outside, with shiny blond hair and healthy skin, but also radiating beauty from the inside: joyful, present, grounded, confident, kind. She wore a trucker hat, dark workout clothes, and drove a huge black Dodge Ram.
I have such a girl-crush on my teacher.
Here is what I needed to tackle before jumping in the next class:
- the syllabus
- the books: Yoga Beyond Belief, The Bhagavad Gita, The Key Muscles of Yoga
- reading on Pranayama–the breath
- reading on foundations of Vinyasa–connecting poses to the breath for a continuous flowing motion
- practice teaching Surya Namaskar A (Sun Salutation) in the following delivery:
- breath (inhale/exhale)
- posture (in Sanskrit and English)
- cue (at least one key body movement to get to posture)
- PICTURES OF MYSELF IN TEN ASANAS!
Sanskrit vocab words I want to have straight:
- yoga: union or connection (yolk)
- asnana: posture (pose)
- pranayama: the conscious awareness of breath: prana, meaning “life force,” and ayama, meaning “extension”)
- ujjayi: victorious breath
- vinyasa: to place in a special way
I would need to do the readings, practice teaching sun salutations, and get those pictures taken with my friend, G, who was one weekend behind, too.
Breath. Posture. Cue. 