My Mind, My Body, My Soul

Yep, that is what I have been working on. I started yoga teacher training this past weekend and boy has this been a wild ride already. Every inch of my body is sore from hours upon hours of practice, sanskrit is rolling around my head like a grocery list and my heart feels happy. I’ve also had some moments of being scared out of my gourd but I’ve been trying to just breathe through them. I know that if I work hard, at the end, I will be ready to teach yoga and I am trying not to get ahead of myself. One quote that keeps popping up in my mind is “Be Now Here or be Nowhere” by Baron Baptiste in his book  Journey Into Power and it has really stuck with me. He says in the book that it won’t make sense at first but when your mind needs it, it will remember it. And he was right. Over the past week, I have found it to be true while in poses or while daydreaming my present moments away.

In the training on Saturday we were holding poses for upwards of about ten minutes and poses that once felt easy were making me quake. My mind and my body were both screaming and all the while, I was going places I had never been. My body has been challenged beyond my former limits and a world of possibilities is open. Last night, I took a slow flow class at one of my favorite new studios and the instructor asked us to come into modified crescent lunge; I wondered, what if I had never moved beyond modified and just stayed there. I would be stuck and I wouldn’t be growing the way that I am now. I remember a time when I struggled with shoulder stand and the thought of standing on my shoulders was beyong my grasp. Now, my practice often feels lonely without it.

My world is expanding and I am challenging my body with discipline and doors that I never knew existed are opening. All because in those scary first moments, I stayed with my breath and honored where I was at the time. No matter the outcome, this journey that I have embraked upon will be amazing and I plan to embrace every moment. Every sore muscle, every flash card, every book, every long drive. All of it. I intend to “Be now here or be nowhere”.

Peace to you, my dear readers.

Hungry for More?

• How do you say tired in Sanskrit?
• Un-Stuck: The Finally.
• A Time and A Place
• Hippy, Dippy, Trippy
• Pushing Too Hard

Tagged as: baron baptiste, yoga, yoga teacher training