Uh Oh

Well, before attempting to hurt any students with yoga, I managed to hurt myself. This is not helping my confidence level at all. I was practicing my yoga routine in my office this week and my hand slipped in the middle of my vinyasa (as I was heading down to push-up position.) In an attempt to recover and prevent myself from landing flat on my face, my left arm and shoulder had to respond quickly. Not sure what my muscles did to recover, but whatever it was, it left me with quite the sore shoulder. I think I just learned an important lesson about cheating and doing yoga without a yoga mat. I've been doing this for years with no issues, but this little incident sent me immediately packing to the store to buy an extra mat to leave in my office. This was a little bonus lesson not covered in my studies. No extra charge, unless you count the cost of the BenGay.

Anatomy for Yoga

I spent an hour going through some of my Anatomy for Yoga lectures yesterday and it was fascinating. It left me with such mixed feelings. On one hand I feel much better about the parts of me that I consider "inflexible." I've always felt that I would never make a good yoga instructor because I'll "never be able to bend like that." I always thought it was because I just wasn't doing something right, or my muscles just aren't as limber as they should be. But I was completely wrong about that. In these lectures the instructor discusses the terms tension and compression. When you hit the wall and can no longer bend or flex your limbs any further it is because of one of those two terms. If it was tension, it would indeed be a tight muscle preventing you from stretching deeper. In these cases, the muscles can be worked on to increase the motion.

But much more often it is because of your bone structure. Literally one bone is hitting another which is called compression. In this case, no matter how much yoga you do, or how much you stretch, you're just never going to be able to move any further. This made me feel so much better about my yoga inadequacies. The instructor said repeatedly, "you either have it or you don't" meaning great flexibility. He also explained how everyone is built differently and how you could really hurt yourself if you don't understand this concept. The best part was watching him move a skeleton around to really understand what bones where hitting and how.

So that left me feeling much better about myself and what I can and can not do. However, it completely terrified me as far as instructing students through a class. How on earth will I know if they are hitting tension or compression? When you see a student not doing a pose 'properly' how do you know if you should try to make an adjustment or just assume they can't bend any more than they are already bending? I will be very happy to get my certification and I am really enjoying all this knowledge that I'm gaining, but I'm still not sure if I will ever be brave enough to put my certification to use. I have a whole new admiration for all you yoga instructors out there!

Chasing a Dream

After years of thinking about it and wishing for it . . . and a couple more years of procrastination and finding all the reasons why I shouldn’t pursue my dream, I finally decided to just go for it and start my training to become a certified yoga instructor. I am both excited and scared. I do worry that all the reasons I conjured up for not going through with it are still valid. There are some poses that I’ll never be able to achieve. I still have old injuries and funny body parts that will not cooperate in some poses. I am also a little old for a new career adventure. But regardless of all these things I still want to pursue it. Even if I never get out there and teach a real class, at a real studio, it means a lot to me to have the training. Yoga has always fascinated me and my desire to learn more is getting overwhelming.

Due to my current schedule of having way more things to do than time to do it, coupled with the fact that I live in the middle of nowhere, I decided to try a ‘distance learning’ course. This won’t be the first study-at-home certification course I’ve taken. A few years ago I became a certified ‘interior redesigner’ and I was very impressed with the course. I learned a lot and enjoyed every minute of it. I knew I wasn’t going to switch careers, but instead I gained a lot of valuable knowledge that I feel enriched my life. I’m taking the same approach to this yoga training. Although I don’t feel that a study-at-home program is the optimal way to achieve training certification, it will certainly teach me a whole lot more than I currently know about yoga.

My course package arrived just before Christmas and so far I’ve read 90 pages of the text book. My head is already bursting from everything that I learned. It is amazing how much more to yoga there is than what meets the untrained eye. Up to this point I’ve spent the past 7 years just exercising my muscles without really understanding the benefits of the postures and movements. My brain is hungry and eager to learn more and more. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to start my journey, but I sure am glad I’m on my way.