Half Way Point

I've made it! I've officially completed the first half of my YTT training. 8 long weeks filled with smiles, laughs, tears, stress, sweat, and even blood (i had a toe nail incident from doing too many jump-throughs one day...i dont want to talk about it) have now come to an end, and I have a short two weeks to digest everything I have learned before I embark on the second half of the training.

As I'm sure that you can tell based on my postings, I have certainly had my ups and downs with the training.  Generally speaking, this was the best thing I ever decided to do, but it definitely came with its challenges.  Never have I been pushed so hard before beyond my limits and faced as many emotional, physical, and spiritual challenges.....and being quite the spiritual and religious skeptic, this certainly was a challenge.  With every challenge and experience, along the way there comes one of those things we call lessons..and of course I have learned many.  But one of the most important ones that I think has made a huge impact on me at this half way point of mine, is really knowing when to tell myself to stop and slow down. Many people will push themselves so incredibly hard and place so much pressure on getting to a certain goal, but will end up experiencing a lot of injuries, whether they be physical or emotional.  And having experienced both types so far in my practice and training, I finally reached a point where I knew that I needed to take it easy.

I started practicing yoga solely to get to the goal.  I wanted to be able to perfect every single pose, and balance on my arms, or stand on my head just like I was witnessing others do in my classes. I would not only become incredibly frustrated for not being able to reach a certain level in a pose, but there were several occasions where I really hurt myself because I wasn't physically ready yet!  As cliche as this is about to sound, but it really truly isn't about getting to a certain pose in a certain time, but rather it is all about HOW you get there (some may say the journey, but I wouldn't want to make you cringe from the cheese).  Since I had an exceptional impatience, and admittedly still do quite often, I ended up pushing myself way past my limits, and as a result, causing a great disservice to both myself and to my yoga practice.

You need to learn to tell yourself to slow down, to pause, or to even stop what you are doing sometimes, because there is absolutely no benefit in rushing to get something done....because even if you do get there that way, it certainly wont be the right way.  Be patient with your body, because sometimes your mind jumps ahead of it. Know that practice REALLY is perfect, and know that with time you will get there.  And really....just hold your damn horses!

My Hips Don't Lie

It never ceases to amaze me how yoga can truly and completely heal. I had a meh day, which turned into a pretty awful evening, and I ended my day feeling completely drained, emotional, and anxious.  But I ended up walking towards my studio, and despite the tears streaming down my face, and the shortness of my breath, I found myself entering the studio, laying down on my mat, and completely succumbing to the overwhelming emotions that were filling up in my body.

My practice began quite roughly. I had short shallow breaths, I was crying (probably freaking out the girl next to me) and I literally couldn’t just be.  During the first few poses I felt impatient and my inability to focus was tremendous.  But even if I was crawling out of my skin and wanting to curl up in a ball in my bed, I knew that this was better than sitting in my room wallowing in my sadness, and I knew it was better than going for that glass of wine and ice cream that I much would have rather indulged in.  Feeling vulnerable on my mat just resulted in me going deeper and becoming more introspective in my practice.

As fate would have it, I realized quickly that my teacher decided to choose this day, this particular class that I reluctantly walked into, to focus on hip opening positions.  I’m sure most people have heard this before, but typically hips are the center of a lot of emotions.  Most yoga teachers I have practiced with, or any articles I have read on the subject, all agree that we hold our stress and negative emotions – fear, guilt, sadness – in our pelvis and hips. While I certainly do feel frustration in hip openers, and know that this is a very tight part of my body, I had never had a particular emotional experience in any hip opening poses (like in pigeon for instance). Um…lets just say that I feel quite differently after tonight and now I get what all the fuss is about.

This was exactly what I needed.  And while I certainly had an emotional practice that began quite panicky and sad, slowly throughout the class I started to relax, my breathing deepened, and my focus completely centered.  Isn’t that so amazing? Walking out of the studio I almost couldn’t believe how a short 90 minutes completely readjusted my attitude and simply made me feel just so much better.

I strongly encourage anyone who is having a shitty, sad, angry, or stressful day to go to a yoga class, release your pent up energy and emotions, refocus your mind, and I guarantee you will leave feeling completely released and free.

And then AFTERWARDS you can go indulge in that ice cream and wine