Yoga Teacher Training

If you follow my Instagram or are friends with me on Facebook, you know I talk about yoga a lot. You might think I’ve joined some weird kind of yoga cult and am now a yoga zombie. I’m not gonna lie, the first class I took where we “OM-ed” in the beginning had me wondering. But as I’ve jumped out of my comfort zone, I find myself wanting to share what yoga has done for me, because it has radically changed my life. In just under two weeks, I will embark on a journey through Yoga Teacher Training for 20+ weeks. It’s going to be a season of learning, structure, change, and busyness for me. I’m sure there will be times where I hate yoga, am stressed and overwhelmed, exhausted, and second-guessing my decision. So, to keep myself grounded in my journey, I’ve set a goal to write a blog post once a week while in training. Once a WEEK. Yikes. Pretty lofty for someone who can’t even remember the last time she wrote a non-food review post. However, one big reason I decided to start this blog and even DO Yoga Teacher Training was so I could share my reflections during this time in my life. Already, I’ve learned a few things in making these decisions to be more vulnerable and honest.

Things won’t always look like you thought they would. I’m not even doing my YTT at the beloved studio that I’ve called my yoga home for almost two years now. I’m grieving this, although it was 100% my decision, and am choosing to be grateful for this unexpected turn of events. It means my yoga teachers have taught me to flourish- to follow my dreams and my heart, rather than stick with the “how it should be’s.”

You have to take care of yourself, and trust life’s timing. I wanted to do YTT last year. I almost got talked into it, but I also got talked out of it. I was mad at the time, but I am SO glad I waited to be healthier before starting something this intense. I frequently struggled with severe hypoglycemia that led to vomiting, near passing out episodes, and foggy thinking. I knew that if I really wanted to do this teacher training thing, I HAD to get serious about taking care of myself- consistently. I gained the weight I had absolutely refused to put on for over a year. It’s been a wonder what those extra pounds have done for me. I would be lying if I said I was even anywhere close to accepting my body of what it is- but I have accepted that I have to take care of it.

It’s OK to trust your gut/heart. I’m an ICU nurse. I want to know how things work, that A causes B, and steps 1-6 will lead me to the right decision. At the end of the day, the only wrong decision I could make about YTT was that I wasn’t going to do it at all. Anxiety about money, my work schedule, energy levels, where to do my training, and who to talk to about it was scary- almost scary enough to make me decide to forget the whole thing altogether and forgo training. But my intuition told me not to. It guided me to exactly the right places and people I needed to, to be brave and take the leap into this adventure.

Stay true to yourself. I started yoga for all the wrong reasons, and was extremely blessed to actually end up finding all the RIGHT reasons to do yoga. I care so much about the people in my life. I am slow to warm but when I love, I love hard and with all of my heart. I am compassionate and have a passion for helping others. If I end up teaching yoga, it’s going to be to the people like me. The ones who feel deeply but won’t admit it, who are tired and burned out of their jobs, who get their feelings hurt by being honest. I’m going to teach the people like me who said yoga was bullshit, because there’s a chance that is all just a mask of a person who needs to find themselves. This could look like teaching in a studio. It could look like teaching in a park. Hell, it could look like teaching my friends yoga in their living room. I’m not going through YTT to quit my day job- I pursuing it in hopes of filling myself up and passing that on to others.

God has a plan. Always. He just does. And it’s going to be far better than what your little, limited, finite human mind could think out. So trust Him. And know that He isn’t going to lead you anywhere He hasn’t already been- because God can use ANYONE.

Thanks for wanting to watch my journey. Some weeks my blog posts might be five sentences; some weeks they might be three pages. I’m excited to see where this takes me. I hope I can help show you that health and healing is possible in unexpected places.

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