Don't take you for granted!

Here I am at the end of week 4 and I can’t believe it’s all over. What a month…. When I walked into the studio on that first day I was filled with a mix of nerves, excitement and hope. Hope that I would find the reassurance I was searching for that I had made the right decision leaving my job as a marketing manager and swapping my stilettos for bare feet and my yoga mat! Yesterday I walked out of that same studio filled with nerves, excitement and confidence…. Confident in my decision to leave my job and follow my dream, confident in my ability as a yoga teacher but above all- confident in me!

My biggest learning curve in the last month did not come from the physical poses, Sanskrit terms or even philosophy; it came from me…. Learning to love me! It sounds so simple but as I learned sometimes the most important things get taken for granted and forgotten about. Realising this is, in itself, a challenge but the hard part is changing your actions to make you number one again, that reassurance I was searching for needed to come from me. 

So yeah, looking back, it was a challenging month; physically- because I was doing up to 4 hours of strong practice a day, which my body wasn’t used to but it was a good kind of body aching and tiredness. Knowing I was working my body hard, getting stronger and also developing my practice, gave me the extra energy I needed to get out of bed every day. Mentally – every day I left feeling like my brain was at maximum capacity learning about the history and philosophy of yoga but somehow each day I was able to push it a little bit further and fit more information in. I was ready for the yoga overload, I thought the philosophy elements would be the toughest bits for me but I was so wrong. Now, I’m not the biggest philosophy fan but I like that I have come away from the training with a deeper understanding on the roots of yoga the various paths and history. But by far the most difficult part of the course was the emotional challenges I faced personally- I was not prepared for this.

About half way through the course I hit a wall- I felt totally lost and wondered what I was doing, I taught a session one morning and it just didn’t feel right… I was starting to panic. Then a very good friend of mine literally pressed the pause button on the whirlwind of thoughts in my head and put some sense back in. He helped me to take a step back and see that I was just getting wrapped up in everyone’s emotions around me, I was loosing focus on me, my goals and my true feelings. I was worrying too much about what I ‘should’ be saying or what I ‘shouldn’t’ be doing and I was loosing the ME part in teaching. I quickly snapped out of it and started to enjoy every day and focus on each day. I stopped worrying about the exam at the end of it, what I needed to know and didn’t and instead I looked at what I could learn each day from the wonderful teachers and other students around me.

Above all, I started listening to me and doing what I needed to do to make me happy. I realized what was holding me back and what was frustrating me, myself! I needed to start loving me…. Now some people might see that as a crazy statement and I’m sure a few eyebrows will be raised. But if you think about it, it is very simple…. If you do not love yourself how can you love something else or give it your all? If you are constantly trying to make yourself look better, not just physically but even in the eyes of other people you loose focus on what is important, you loose focus on you. I needed to put me first… It is not about being selfish, it is about being true to myself. So this is what I am doing, it is difficult. By nature I am a yes person but slowly I am learning sometime no is the right answer. This also comes onto the mat…. As the weeks went on and we had our morning practice and the teacher suggested going deeper if we felt like it… I gave myself the option, sometimes I took the deeper posture and sometimes I didn’t. But whatever pose I did, I committed to it and that gave me a better sense of achievement than being in a pose and feeling pain or counting the breaths until I could release. However, by not being so hard on my body I strangely found my practice really improved!

So I left the studio yesterday for the last time filled with mixed emotions,

Sad that this part of the journey is over, Relief to have finished and passed my exams, Excitement looking to the next stage in this journey but above all Happy- really really happy and proud of me; knowing that I have achieved the first part of my dream, it is a reality and now I can start living it! 

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