That first Monday after the teacher training weekend was hard. It was a struggle to go from such an intense, transformative set of days to “regular” life.
Child 3 woke up covered with a horrible case of poison oak, worse than what I’d had the week before that sent me to the doctor for prednisone, and she had to stay home from school. Husband was a bit stressed with his job and being “on” all weekend so that I could attend training. Children 1 & 2 are teenagers and forever lost in their own worlds.
I went to an evening yoga class Monday for my 2nd of 45 recorded classes. Two other students from the training said they’d be there, which was good for keeping me motivated.
The class was not great. The instructor (a favorite of mine) acknowledged from the start that she wasn’t on top of her game. She did a bit too much chanting and philosophizing at the start for my taste: when class is only an hour, I kind of want to get right to it. Besides, I can’t keep up anyway with a lot of deep dialogue when I’m focused on movement, too.
My gripey, whiney list goes on: We didn’t do enough vinyasas. A woman who wasn’t doing much in the first place got overheated and asked to open the door to cool the room (my pet peeve: just lay down without asking an entire class of people to accommodate you!). We were expected to drop right into poses I needed time for (twisted crescent lunge being the evening’s challenge for me…).
But the whole time, the instructor reminded us that when things aren’t as we expect (or want), we can choose to let go of negative reactions and go with what is.
That was my take-away from the night and something sunk in for me: yoga is a practice for life, just like meditation. A way to practice being a human in a dynamic, unpredictable world.
You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometimes you might find
You get what you need
-Mick Jagger
Indeed, the crazy meditation insight from the day before–that I am released from suffering when I absorb it–caused me to pick up on a key reason I signed up for the training in the first place.
I have sensed for a while now that I need some sort of change, some sort of catalyst, to knock me from patterns and habits I’ve developed over what have been some intense three years of pain and grief, both physically and emotionally.
It wasn’t until I began to experience the results that first week of teacher training that I realized that this is at least part of what I was looking for when I signed up.
Even the weeks leading up to the training were terribly stressful for a variety of reasons–but they were also just a few of the many crazy days that make up a life in which not everything EVER goes as planned.
All I’ve got is the way I choose to respond.
Breath. Posture. Cue. 