For about two years now, I have been looking for the just-right yoga teacher training course, feeling drawn to learning more about it. I explored several paths; wading through all the options was a great first step into an education about what yoga is. Patience and discernment paid off, and yesterday I completed my first of six intensive weekends of training: 31 hours over 3 days of immersion in learning with a wonderful group of people atYoga Loft, in my old hometown of Boulder.
Our study includes lots of reading, reflecting, and discussing, in addition to regular practice with the physical asanas (what most people in the US think of as yoga is only one of 8 aspects) and meditation. Our teachers encourage us to keep a journal or blog to help us process and document our journey of learning.
An insight I had this weekend was that one way I put my guard up is by choosing separateness, remaining private. So, to practice connection, I commit to sharing my musings publicly instead of keeping them in a journal. If you have time and interest, I invite you to share in conversation, either through this medium or another, and muck about together. (Lotus flowers couldn’t grow without muck; thus they are a ubiquitous icon associated with yoga. I get this; I love muck and the resultant beauty.)
One of our tasks is to describe yoga and the purpose we give it. Here are some initial thoughts:
Yoga is simultaneously practice and knowledge of perfection. As one of my teachers, Jeff Bailey, put it, “Yoga is the practice of attaining what you already have.” Through yoga, I see my soul, my “self” - rather than my body or my mind or other changing externalities.
And when I live from soul, I also stop being separate and individual; I connect to the collective. So, I practice asanas, meditation, and taking care of myself in other ways, and this practice itself is “doing yoga”. But in the practice, I am not trying to attain something I don’t already have—I do have it; practice just regrounds me there, reminds me to be soul-aware and present.
"Practice becomes firmly grounded when well attended to for a long time, without break and in all earnestness." -Yoga Sutra 1.14
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