Editor’s Note: I just completed my 200 hour Yoga Teacher Training course. I have two posts, and essentially they are out of order, but for a reason. I believe expressing gratitude should be a high priority, so I wanted to post it first. And the second will be the story and a tribute to “The Chocolate Poet Society”, an amazing group of people who made me feel like I belong. I want to ensure I devote enough time and effort to write about what they mean to me.
This weekend our daughter Megan and her husband Thomas are
celebrating their 11th wedding anniversary. Our sons, Patrick and Sean, sang before the
wedding, and even wrote an original song that they performed. Shortly before the ceremony, I went to their
hotel room, where they were practicing, to take them to the church. When I got there, they told me, “We just
wrote a new verse for the song”. Since
this was my first child getting married, I was a bit stressed, and I nearly
lost my mind, and said, “You can’t add another verse! You have to have this locked in!” No matter, they added the new verse, and the
song went well, and everything worked out beautifully.
Fast forward to a few weeks ago, I was in the Georgia mountains at a heavenly house with a waterfall
Going into this, I never imagined that I could ever put
together an hour-long yoga class, I didn’t think I’d be able to sequence it, I
wouldn’t be able to theme it, I’d lose track of what I was doing, I thought of
all the reasons I couldn’t do this. As
the nine-day journey progressed, Sheila Ewers and Tami Roberts, our
instructors, did a wonderful job of preparing us, building bit by bit, and
parceling out enough each day to give us the confidence that we could do
it. Still, I was scared, and I didn’t
know if I could do it.
But then, it all started flowing, and I knew why it was
flowing, which gave me the idea of how to theme my class. I realized that I could do this because of
the great teachers I’ve had over the years, and I set my theme as a theme of
gratitude for all of them. And I told my
story of my yoga journey, a relatively short one, but an important journey all
the same.
I told my class why I started practicing yoga five years
ago. I had run in a Team Marathon at
WIKA in Germany, and I really, really sucked.
I was very upset and angry, and when I got home, I told Laurel, I want
to start going to yoga with you. The
reason was that when Laurel and I would run, she ran with such ease, and her
breath was incredible. She breathed so
effortlessly while I sounded like a chain smoker running down the road. I wanted what she had, I wanted to learn to
breathe like that to become a better runner.
Laurel warned me that yoga wouldn’t be easy for me. I said, “No shit, have you seen my
hamstrings? I know this won’t be
easy”. I remember going to my first yoga
class, and Megan Kearney, the owner of Ebb & Flow, started off by talking
about how some people approach yoga like a lion, ready to attack, while others
are like a unicorn, ready to run out of the back of the room. No doubt, I was a unicorn. And there are still times, I’m a
unicorn. Anytime a teacher brings up
hamstrings or quads, I’m ready to escape, but I stick it out and put the work
in.
I told the class that every day when I step on the mat, I
start by saying, “Thank you for bringing me here”. That expression of gratitude is for Laurel
for inviting me to join her at yoga, it’s for God, it’s for anyone who has
played a part in this. Every time I step
on the mat, I express my gratitude.
It’s a Great Day for Yoga!
And I then I say something I learned years ago from the
late, great Badger Bob Johnson, a hockey coach.
Badger Bob was one of the most positive people who ever lived, and he would
always say, “It’s a great day for hockey!”
So I start my practice by saying, “It’s a great day for yoga!”
And I asked the class, “Isn’t it a great day for yoga? I think so.”
And I told them, “Yoga is the teacher, I’m simply the conduit or
vessel. I’ll do my best to allow you to
have a great day on the mat.”
As I worked through my sequencing, again, while it wasn’t
easy, I felt so comfortable because of the many classes I’ve had with so many
great teachers. Throughout the
class, I weaved in some of the names of
teachers and what they brought to me.
I’ll keep this anonymous, except for one. I couldn’t resist when the time was right to
tell the class to come down to their “hiney” as a tribute to Valerie Had.
Was my class flawless?
Oh my God, no! Early in the class I was going through a sequence of Low
Crescent Lunge poses to Warrior I Poses to Warrior II poses. As I was on the Warrior II series, I had a
moment of panic as I realized I had skipped right over the Warrior I
series. As the momentary panic attack
subsided, I was able to realize I could just go back and cover the Warrior I
series, so it went off without any issues.
Everybody Loves to Dance!
Before we went into Dancer pose, I cued it up by saying the
above, which I thought about afterward, really isn’t true. Truth be known, I hate to dance. I can’t dance, I have no rhythm, I can’t even
clap along to a song. But you know, upon
further review, that’s one of the beauties of yoga. We are together in a studio, we are a
community, but we are also on an island on the mat. For the most part, I don’t notice anyone else
in the class, and I doubt they notice me.
We are together, but we are alone, and we can express ourselves however
we’d like to. So yoga is the one place I
can dance, I can dance like no one is watching me.
The funny thing is, I used to hate balance poses, but now I love them. It’s not that I can do them any better than I used to, it all has to do with how I view them. Being a Type A, I used to get so angry when I couldn’t hold a balance pose, now, I just take whatever the day brings, if I can balance, great, if not, there’s always tomorrow. And I can dance.
Just Breathe
I told the class that it wasn’t until just recently that I
realized, I had accomplished what I had set out to do in the beginning. I learned to breathe. I was out for a run the one morning, and I
realized I had this beautiful, smooth breath.
The irony is I didn’t really care anymore. I really don’t run that much these days, I
mainly do yoga, so I accomplished what I set out to do, but I’ve achieved so
much more.
As we wound down the class, I read the Jim Valvano quote
above. I told the class that every time
I step on the mat, I laugh, I think, I cry.
I came to yoga to learn to breathe, but I’ve gotten so much more. Yoga gives me a heck of a day, every day.
If you know me, you know that I’m probably my worst
critic. I can tell you 100 things that
I’m not good at, and maybe 2-3 I am good at.
Unfortunately that’s the way I’m wired.
But I was pretty proud of myself.
And still, I knew how I got here and why I was able to do this. I’m grateful for those who have given me this
opportunity and given me the ability to do something I never thought I could
do.
My roots were at Ebb & Flow where I learned so much about anatomy, and I also learned what yoga really was. I learned so much about the beauty of yoga at Blue Lotus Yoga in Duluth and John’s Creek, and was fortunate enough to learn under some incredible teachers. My love for yoga expanded tremendously during those years and led me to take this course (As a side note, I traveled, I think, five times to Georgia from Ohio in the past two months because there is only one person I would ever want to train under, and that’s Sheila Ewers). And this past year and a half at The Wonder Within has been amazing. The teachers there are so precise in their cueing, I could hear them in my mind as I went through my class. The cueing came so naturally for me, it was almost like second nature. Lastly, while I know I’m biased, I really believe that Laurel is one of the best teachers I’ve ever seen at theming a class. She themes her class with a different message each week, and she gives her students a card, similar to the one below, as a memento of the class. I’ve seen her put in so many hours and effort to theme, and I think it really helped me come up with a theme for my class.
Although I think she gets hers done sooner than five minutes
before class….
Thank you for bringing me here
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