TGIF - Wonderful Friday!

The end of week 5. Whew! :-)

I have to say that getting back to yoga has made this week SO much more bearable. Certainly I am feeling much more like my old self. My body is returning to normal, and it has been nice to wake up every day feeling sane and (fairly) rational rather than totally overwhelmed.

All you teachers who have been through TT will know that by week 5 peops are falling apart all over the place, so I feel I'm coping really well.
Watch out next week, 'cos I'll be back in full swing and ready to "charge forward" through to the end with my "smiling happy face", "chest open like a flower petal blooming"!

So, some notes from our latest posture clinic which was taken by Shelby from a studio here in the States (?) She was brilliant at getting people to try different things to bring out their personality and emphasized that WE have to be willing to get out of our comfort zone when teaching as we are asking all our students to get out of theirs and they will respond better to us when we do this.

She said we have a choice to be just another yoga teacher or a yoga teacher that yogis will make a special effort to come and take a class with. But its up to US to make that difference.

Needless to say I want to be the latter! HOW to get there is something I'm still working on though. Something Brandy said yesterday, (she is the current world yoga champion) was that we had to find what we liked about the posture and express that. Particuarly in the Floor Series as the postures are much less dynamic than the Standing Series so its harder to keep the students engaged and motivated to work hard.

Her advice was to record ourselves to see how we sound. Hmm....yeah ok. And that when we are saying the dialogue we have to really "go over the top" in our delivery - because chances are it will NOT sound as uncomfortable or over the top as it does to our own ears. Something I think I will try out in the privacy of my room before I let loose in dialogue clinic.... :-)

So that being said, I'm off with dictaphone in hand to go and practice delivering Pavanamuktasana / Wind Removing Pose. Though how I'm going to make a colon cleaning posture sounds exciting I'm not sure! LOL

Made it to Savasana!

Last night we ended up going back after dinner and having another Posture Clinic instead of a lecture. A change in plan we hadn't expected but something that should have been of no suprise as Bikram was away for the night. It was then also announced that we had to deliver Tree Pose AND Toe Stand together. Our complaints about not having any advance notice about this just fell on deaf ears and we were told that we should always study 2-3 postures ahead so that we are prepared.

Ah yeah, well............. I wasn't. Its not been an issue for me to date as I learn't up to Triangle Pose at home but we're now starting to hit the postures I need to learn from scratch. It mean't I wasn't as prepared to deliver these postures as I would have liked, but I got up and did it anyway. A test for me to not be too hard on myself and just be ok with it not being perfect.

So as an added suprise, one of the teachers running the clinic asked for some more people to come up and be part of the demo team while I said my dialogue. Apparently in the notes from previous clinics it said that I was really starting to look at the bodies and connect the dialogue so was ready to start looking at more bodies. A nice compliment for how I'm doing :-)

As a side note, I need to explain that after you deliver each posture the teachers running the clinic all make notes in a binder about how you did and these are treated as TOP SECRET! So although they give you verbal feedback about your performance you DON'T get to see any of the notes written about you. Apparently its so that no matter who runs the "clinic" that day they can look back and see how you're tracking and improving etc. Which is fine except that a lot of the teachers have conflicting ideas about how you should deliver the dialgoue. So one day you may be told to do one thing and then the next, the total opposite. It all depends on the personality of the teacher etc and though it gives you some new ideas about how to develop your style it can also be a bit confusing some days.

Now that I've explained all that; thank you to all the yogis/ yoginis from Group 15 who jumped up and demo'd Tree Pose and Toe Stand for me :-) I am disappointed I didn't do better as I had some moments where I just went blank and mixed up the lines ... OY! So much for not needing to be perfect. Baby steps hey.

BUT in saying that, I didn't mentally beat myself up too much for it. Hey it was 11:30 pm, no-one else was volunteering and I just wanted to get it over with. And the best part of all is that after Toe Stand, is Savasana........... It means I've made it to the Floor Series!

So today we had our regular Thursday class with Emmy and then she gave a lecture on Muscular Skeletal Dysfunction where she explained the problems that occur when specific joints / muscles don't work and other ones have to compensate for it. A lot of the problems we have today are due to our sedantary lifestlyes and the fact we go out and try to be "weekend warriors" after sitting at an office desk all week.

She also spoke about the Precision of Intent and stressed the need to do the postures the right way for your body at that time rather than adjusting the posture to suit your body as its the ONLY way to get improvements and its much harder to re-learn a posture once you have taught the joints / muscles how to do it incorrectly. Really interesting stuff and something to carry into the Hot Room :-)

HALFWAY! HALFWAY! HALFWAY!

So today is officially the halfway mark. The pic is of the yoga top I wore today in honour of the occasion :-) "Never Give Up" My Mantra - and me standing there defiantly in the face of everything the Universe has thrown at me!

It would be so insincere of me to say that I'm not happy about reaching this point and being on the downward slope to graduation. And probably no surprise to any of you either. This experience to date has been such an oxymoron, in that the yoga is something I love so much and I am so excited about the prospect of being able to teach it, but the process in getting there has so far left a lot to be desired.

I had a dream last night that I was back on the Goldie about to teach my first class at the Burleigh Studio. Unfort the alarm woke me up before I actually got to teach the class, but I was there talking to Sean (the studio owner ) getting some last minute advice (thanks x) and all the regular yoga peops were there. Awwhhhhhh! :-) xx It was such an amazing feeling to wake up with. Like my subconscious was reminding me why I am here - something I've been needing lately.

So I did a second class today. Again, no rockstar effort just gently going through the paces. Every muscle is sore from having time off so that was reminder enough to take it easy. The room didn't feel particuarly hot and I coped really well.

For the last two nights we have had lectures with Bikram lasting about 2-3 hours each, from which I have NO notes to write. Read into that what you will. (I'm sure most of you will figure it out :-) I won't comment further as I just have to stop putting energy into fighting "the process" so much.

These were followed by Hindu movies and so that mean't we didn't get to bed till after 2 a.m. both nights. The movies are played at 100 (?) decibels so are deafening loud - purposely to keep you awake, and the air conditioning is set so low as to freeze us all, again purposely to keep you awake. Then if by some miracle you do manage to sleep sitting up frozen in your chair, the peops in charge come around and wake you up......... ?........................? ...............................?

Again, NO comment. A conscious decision NOT to ask why? Just to follow "the (goddamn) process".

We're up to Standing Seperate Leg Head to Knee Pose in our Posture Clinic. They have all been going fairly well for me. Some days I get the dialogue spot on and then others not so. I'm learning to recover from those times when the dialogue isn't coming to me and to just keep talking until I find my place again, but I'm certainly not comfortable with it. Probabaly more to do with my wanting to be the perfectionist than having trouble leading the class. Oy! Massive learning curve and lessons there for me. I know EXACTLY where it comes from, some of it being a Leo and some of it other "stuff" I don't need to go into here.

Lets hope that being aware helps me at least start to ease up about it a bit and give myself a bit of a break :-) Hmmm...... if you thought my standards were tough for others in terms of the level of compassion I decided to / or not to show others, you should see the standards I set for myself ... :-(

I wrote the beginning of this post before Posture Clinic today, and have just come back from there. One of the comments that the teacher running the clinic today made was, "Do you want to be perfect, or be a good yoga teacher?". Wow, how poignant considering what I had just written a few hours ago! I love how the Universe sends you signs like that to show you're on the right path :-) I will try and carry that with me throughout all areas of my life.

Back into the Hot Room

I've fallen in love again! Sigh......................

.......with Bikram yoga that is. After having ten days off I went back into the Hot Room today and took a class this morning.

They say the best way to appreciate something is to be without it for a while, and boy do I EVER appreciate it now. I know undoubtedly that this is something I want in my life, today, tomorrow, and for many years to come. That this is something that makes me a better person and that without it I very quickly fall apart. (These comments can also be said about a certain Auzzie Cowboy back at home and I wish the decisions regarding that relationship were as easy and as clear to me. xx)

Anyway, I decided for my sanity's sake that although I still have another week excemption on my Medical Cert I needed to go and do a class. Either that or I could no longer be held responsible for my actions...... LOL (Actually not that funny, I have been feeling so depressed and irrational over the past week) So I checked my ego at the door, and went in and did a very gentle class. No rock star action needed here, just getting back into the room, breathing and easing through the postures.

Hmmm.... it was heaven. Well mentally anyway. Physically my body was tight and every joint and muscle a stark reminder of the emotional strain I've been under. My knees screamed at me through all 3 parts of Awkward - the place you store anger. Not really any surprises there. Then through Eagle and Standing Head to Knee my upper back was aching - a sign you're holding the weight of the world on your shoulders. Again, no surprise. And in Standing Bow and Triangle my hips barely opened up at all - having trouble making decisions about moving forward in your life? Again, bang on!

But despite all this, it felt SOooooo good just to be doing yoga again. It was a well timed reminder of why I am here. Because I LOVE this yoga, because it works and because I want to share that with people :-) So I will just try and remind myself of that when I'm feeling at my wits end with being here..........

Mondayitist

There doesn't seem to be much energy around here today. I try and keep my negative energy to myself and don't comment on how I'm feeling about things so its been interesting to hear other people's comments about how they are feeling and where they are at.

My roommate wrote an email titled, "Breaking up with Bikram" over the weekend, which was very funny and pretty much says it all. It seems we are all experiencing frustrations in some way at some level with some aspect of "the process" here. Makes me feel a little better in that I'm not just going slowly insane!

So we had posture clinic today and did Standing Seperate Leg Stretching Pose / Dandayamana Bibhaktapada Paschimotthansana - a posture I love to say the title of but wasn't as much fun trying to type :-) Its kind of an easy posture, in that after the stamina required for the previous posture which is Balancing Stick Pose its an easy stretching posture that gives you time to get some energy back. So based on that, its probably one of the easier postures to deliver as it doesn't require a lot of energy from either yourself or the students and so Posture Clinic was pretty mellow as a result.

I delivered my dialogue ok. Probably my least best in terms of getting it verbatim and when the teacher asked if I would like to change anything about it, I said I would have preferred to have gotten the dialogue right. "A perfectionist?" she asked. Talk about hitting the nail on the head. Yes, yes and yes. But at least I

.......?

The following is posted later on Tuesday - Couldn't get back on to the internet yesterday to finish this post and it seems it went up on my blog regardless. Reading back over it, maybe that was a good thing as you probably don't need to read anymore complaining and negative comments about how my days are going.

Sigh....... I have such a love / hate relationship with this whole experience.
Anyway, today (Tuesday) is a whole 'nother day :-)

Question the Universe

On this day of your life, I believe God wants you to know......
that "Why is this happening?" is the most useless question in the Universe.

The only really profitable question is, "What?" As in, "What do I choose now?" This question empowers. The "why" question simply perplexes, and rarely satisfies even when it gets a good answer.

So don't try to "figure it out." Stop it. Just focus on what you now wish to create. Keep moving forward. There's nothing behind you that can possibly serve you better than your highest thoughts about tomorrow.

I got this message over the weekend from Neale Donald Walsch - Conversations with God, and it is so fitting for where I am right now. My head is full of "why is this happening now?" questions and I am frustrated by a lack of immediate answers and an inability to make sense of a lot of things that have happened since I've been here.

Its been a week since I've done any yoga and boy do I ever NEED to get back into the Hot Room. At home if I miss even a few days in a row I start feeling a little frazzled and unnerved so to be forced to take a week off while here under these circumstances has just compounded any mental anxiety I've been under.

So I'm trying to let go and just go with the flow. To stop running my internal dialogue and trust the universe will look after me and send me exactly what I need at the exact right time. Hmmmm....... easier said than done.

Anyway, on to lighter things; this pic is taken at a beach side restaurant in Malibu where I caught up with my Kiwi friends again on Sunday aft. It is always SO nice to get away from here.

The weekends are a strange time here. You go suddenly from being tightly scheduled all day, having to be somewhere at an exact time, signing in and accounting for every movement along with 430 others to then having time to do whatever you want for 36 hours.

Its eerily silent in the halls as everyone makes their way out into the real world. And while its great being able to make simple decisions like when you want to get up and when you want to eat etc, it also leaves plenty of time for thinking. As I've said before, not always a good thing around here. I know I'm not the only one who finds the weekends harder than the weekdays purely for this reason. When you're constantly busy it takes your mind of things like feeling homesick and all those infamous, "why is this happening?" questions.

Today is the start of week 5. By the end of this week we will be on the downhill stretch. It still feels too long a time to start counting down though. At the moment I'm not putting in much so not getting much out of it all. Kind of a catch 22 because I feel like keeping to myself and yet when I hear how happy other yogis are and how much they are just loving the TT experience and I am jealous to not be feeling the same about my time here to date.

Am planning to try a morning class tomorrow so lets hope that helps start to change things around for me :-) Otherwise its going to be a bloody long 5 weeks..........

Compassionate huh?

Do you consider yourself a compassionate person? It is something that is talked about a LOT here. Both having compassion for each other while we are here and more importantly having compassion for our students in the classroom.

Certainly if anyone had asked me if I was I would have unequivocally said yes, truly believing I was. However over the past few days, I have realised that my so-called "compassion" is not given freely to everyone in the same manner. (I told you having too much time on your hands to muse over things may or may not be a good thing? lol)

Sure, I have compassion for babies, kittens, anything small and helpless. Hey, I cried for days afer having to take "Little Holly" back, the dog I fostered from the animal shelter for 6 weeks at Christmas. But when it comes to adults I realise that my "compassion" is given in measured quantities according to my own set of rules.

Now while I find it easy to help someone who is genuinely needing it, when you can see their soul is hurting and they are really trying, its the times when someone is incompetent and not putting an effort in (according to MY standards) that I struggle to find the patience to be compassionate. (V.P. I can see you smiling from here, because I know you know EXACTLY what I am like and what I am talking about :-)

I could give you numerous accounts of this exact situation as it happens here on a daily basis. Sh*t sometimes minute by minute. And to date I have let it infuriate me! My immediate reaction is that we've all paid a lot of money to be here and so if you're not going to take it seriously and put the effort in then stop wasting our bleeping time and bleeping go home. You get the picture, right?

However! I have spent the past few days thinking about my reaction to these situations and wondering what sort of teacher I am going to be if I only have compassion and patience for those students in the class who are practicing the way I (thats a BIG CAPITAL "I") think they should according to the rules and discipline I like in my own practice. Hence automatically making assumptions about what someone is capable of without knowing anything about what is happening in their lives.

Which is EXACTLY what we have been told by numerous teachers here NOT to do. They have all said that we have to let our students take their own journey, that we cannot assume anything about what they are capable of in their practice. I've even written those exact words in a previous post and yet its only in the past few days that it actually resonated with me. And since I have been focusing on this, there have been more and more signs and reminders popping up everywhere. Like they say, when the student is ready the teacher will come.

I think what has also helped it hit home too, is that I am currently excused from doing yoga for the week. From the outside I look like I am fine and that there is nothing wrong with me. Peops probably see me sunning by the pool, relaxed when they come out of class hot, sweaty and exhausted and wonder why the hell I get to get out of classes? Yet inside, there is obviously a physical stress I need to recover from and an emotional turmoil that I'm trying to deal with. None of which you could tell by just looking at me.

One of the visiting teachers last night read out a letter from a Studio Owner saying this exact thing. How we simply don't know what is going on in people's lives and what they may be struggling with and or had to overcome to get into the hot room that day and onto their mat. That we should respect each and every one of them for getting there and how they practice is none of our business (with the obvious exception of making sure they are practicing safely etc).

Then yesterday I got the following email from "Daily OM" a spiritual message centre I subscribe to. It really struck a cord with me and I hope that through my newfound awareness I can start to change and not make judgements about how I feel people should be performing. I'll let you know how I go! :-)

Conscious Evolution

Being Aware is the First Step. Awareness is the first step to creating change in any situation, without it, there would be no desire for change.

Life is a journey comprised of many steps on our personal path that takes us down a winding road of constant evolution. And each day, we are provided with a myriad of opportunities that can allow us to transform into our next best selves.

One moment we are presented with an opportunity to react differently when yet another someone in our life rubs us the wrong way; on another day we may find ourselves wanting to walk away from a particular circumstance but are not sure if we can. Eventually, we may find ourselves stuck in a rut that we can never seem to get out of. We may even make the same choices over and over again because we don’t know how to choose otherwise. Rather than moving us forward, our personal paths may take us in a seemingly never-ending circle where our actions and choices lead us nowhere but to where we’ve already been.

It is during these moments that awareness can be the first step to change.
Awareness is when we are able to realize what we are doing. We observe ourselves, noticing our reactions, actions, and choices as if we were a detached viewer.

Awareness is the first step to change because we can’t make a change unless we are aware that one needs to be made in the first place. We can then begin understanding why we are doing what we are doing. Afterward, it becomes difficult not to change because we are no longer asleep to the truth behind our behaviors. We also begin to realize that, just as much as we are the root source behind the causes for our behaviors, we are also the originator for any changes that we want to happen.

There is a freedom that comes with awareness. Rather than thinking that we are stuck in a repetitive cycle where there is no escape, we begin to see that we very much play a hand in creating our lives. Whether we are aware of them or not, our behaviors and choices are always ours to make. Our past and our present no longer have to dictate our future when we choose to be aware. We are then free to move beyond our old limits, make new choices, and take new actions. With awareness, our paths can’t help but wind us forward in our lives while paving the way for new experiences and new ways of being. It is through awareness that we can continue to consciously evolve.