Over the Rainbow

I practiced Rocket 2 with my roommate yesterday. I really tore me up after a few nice days of primary - perhaps too comfortable with primary. Looking back, perhaps it was telling me that I need to step up my daily practice a bit. Today after teaching a pretty good modified primary class I came home and just crashed - under the covers and everything. I thought maybe and hour would refresh me, but I woke up at 4 and I was supposed to go observe a Hatha1 class at one of the studio classes where I teach and I had a tiny headache and was still exhausted so I just said that I couldn't go and came back to bed. I think there is a weather front coming through. I am still sore from practice yesterday. I'll get up for mysore tomorrow. Tomorrow the day I really pull out all the stops.

I am quitting my day job and trying to go part-time and teaching to support myself. Of course there is another income in our family, so we're not going completely over the deep end. At first I had so many doubts that it was hardly worth the stress of leaving my stressful job. But now that my decision is sinking in and with much support from my husband and my entire family, I now feel an inner peace that I may never have felt before.

Ironically, when I was in teacher training, my mentor asked if I was going to be one of those crazy people who try to make a living as a yoga teacher and run around to all sorts of yoga shalas, gyms and clubs teaching whatever, where ever and trying to stay true to my own practice - and I said no - I just wanted to teach one or two classes to make a little extra money. Then I learned how much I loved teaching and that continuing in a job that I hated and felt was making me physically, mentally and spiritually ill was far worse running all over town chasing elusive yoga jobs before some other teacher could get to them.

Whatever happens I am chasing my dream - chasing rainbows - which I have never done before. I've never given into anything risky, even if I thought it could bring me true happiness. I've always chosen the safe route. But now I'm taking the advice I'm always giving my students when they try arm balances for the first time - don't be afraid of falling on your face, or learn to tuck and roll.

Peace out

I can't believe it

I can't believe that I haven't blogged since New Year's Day. So much has happened that I can't even describe it all. Needless to say, I haven't felt that I had the time to journal it, and much of it I didn't want to record at all. Too much pain, anger and frustration, betrayal, mistakes. But in the end forgiveness, new beginnings and all for the better. Ultimately, I left my old studio where I had begun and intended, hoped to begin teaching, for the big, shiny studio down the street that I never thought I would go to. I had always thought the big, shiny studio was just a yoga churning machine, but it's not. It turns out that it is just well run and filled with love and grace and has helped to transform me into this much softer, easier, more balanced person with a renewed dedication to my practice.

A big part of my renewed dedication and transformation has come from a 5 day workshop with the person whom I've come to consider my guru, Tim Miller. My husband and I did the "Classical Ashtanga weekend," which was really nice to share together and definitely renewed his dedication to the practice and strengthened our bond (if that's even possible.) Then came the three days where Tim says he's going to let the practice chew us up and spit us back out. I was already a little sore from practicing so vigorously over the weekend - putting in a little more effort than I might normally have. But Monday's Primary Series felt great, everything was open from the weekend and although I was sore, I felt that I was gaining more and more strength. I dreaded Tuesday because I knew we would be doing Second Series which I don't practice because I haven't passed the final test of dropping back into a backbend on my own. If I hadn't taken off a month from the trauma of switching studios, I might be there, but who knows.

The backbends of Second Series felt wonderful. Tim helped me get further into Bekasana which is where I usually stop. Then we did Laguvadrasana - I did a decent version. Then we did a bunch of "research" poses before coming into Kapotasana. I don't usually stress about Kapotasana, because I'm usually not even very close. But when I started to go into it, I felt my back soften and I felt something in my front body open and I kept moving my head and hands closer to my feet until I felt a toe, at which point I yelled out "I feel a toe!" The people on either side of me were trying to help me get my hands to my feet because everything was so slippery. Suddenly, Tim came over and said, "Kyrsten, don't get up!" And he took my hands and I opened my front body as much as I could and he put my hands on my heels. Unfortunately, I did not come up in the traditional was, but collapsed into supta virasana. Ah well, next time!

I was completely invigorated and looking forward to the 3rd day which I thought would be a mixture of Primary and Second Series Poses. But no, the tricky monkey had us doing 3rd series arm balances, many of which you enter from headstand. It was incredible. I did King Dancer, which I have never done and Eka Pada Raj Kapotasana - incredibly, somehow. As we were lying in savasana, Tim said that we might experience some untying of knots and have some emotional releases. Well, at lunch I started having emotional releases all over the place. I started crying over something with my roommate and telling her I loved her and just bawling all over the place. Finally I got it together, but I was exhausted. Then I went to a therapy session and cried the whole time, but not in a really sad way, just in a cathartic way. Then, when Tim came to pick me up, I started crying again and telling him how much I loved him. Yes, I would say I had a release. I also had this desire to make great changes in my life, but more on that later.