The First Post

After starting yoga in 2011, when I was 32, I’ve gradually unfurled the vague-ish goal of going through a teacher-training program by the time I’m 40.

This past summer, 2018, was the summer I turned 39. Over the years, when I pictured going through teacher-training, I pictured doing it in an exotic location, like Hawaii or Bali or Costa Rica, over an extended period–several weeks, a month, or a whole summer.

But the reality is that I’m married with three school-age kids, work part-time, have loads of daily responsibilities, and a limited travel budget. Luckily, we do live in a place that may not exactly be exotic, but it’s not shabby: Half Moon Bay, California, about a 30 minute drive along the Pacific coast south of San Francisco.

So, in June, when a friend from the yoga studio I go to most frequently told me about a teacher-training program coming up that will be held one weekend a month over six months, right in Half Moon Bay, I realized this may be the most realistic chance I’d get to see my vague-ish goal into fruition.

When I call the goal vague-ish, I mean that I know what I want to do–go through teacher training–but I don’t know exactly why. I’m not discounting teaching in the future, but that’s not what is driving me. I know some people do it to deepen their own practices, but participating in workshops can do that, too.

All I can say is that, often, the best way to learn is to teach. What I want to learn, exactly, I don’t know, but I know that being around teachers–and understanding how to teach myself–would take me somewhere interesting.

The course would be $1900, which I would have to figure out, take six weekends of my life and the life I share with four other people, and at the end I would have a 200-hour teaching certificate recognized by Yoga Alliance.

June came and went. Then July. Then August.

I put off making the decision for so long that I missed the deadline and the first weekend of training.

I figured my inaction was an action that let the opportunity go by…until another friend, not associated with the first, let me know she had learned about the training and was allowed to come in late. There was room for one more person to do the same, she told me.

That was it. On September 16, 2018, I emailed the coordinator and confirmed that I would be the last person to sign up. Class would begin for me on September 29th.

I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m excited about how I’m getting there.