I wouldn’t have imagined a year ago that I would be a yoga teacher today.
I knew I wanted to do yoga teacher training at some point but I hadn’t yet envisioned what life after that training might look like.
I now know that I have a lifetime of personal practice and development ahead of me along with finding my footing, lane, and effectiveness as a teacher.
There is a deep sense when I teach that I am where I am supposed to be, and doing what I’m supposed to be doing and I look forward to what this sense might look like in the years ahead.
At present, I’m actively working towards teaching yoga full time. I want to see what having a full schedule and a sustainable income would look like.
It’s not yet there, and admittedly I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m learning as I go. Finances are already tight/ behind and there are times I get concerned.
My drive now is to have a vision, to do the best I can each day, and to not let fear of money or lack immobilize me.
I teach at two yoga studios (one is a permanent teaching role and the other is an internship), I partner with a married couple who have a personal training business, I teach private clients occasionally, I have an audition for another studio coming up and another studio owner has asked me to join their team as well. Things are coming together and it’s all very much exciting.
I’ve also started dating again. Earlier in the summer, I left a year long, long distance relationship.
I haven’t been out long, and I’m finding that as time goes on I learn more and more what I want and I know for certain that what I want is to be with someone in the same city as me. To explore what growing and sharing life might look like on a consistent basis.
At present, I’ve narrowed my dating down from three people to just one to explore where this one road may go. I’m trying, (albeit at times unsuccessfully) to not lose my grounding and centering around the wholeness of myself while in pursuit of someone else. I found someone I really like and it’s easy for me to lose myself in that process.
So here’s to staying focused during these beginning days of getting to know someone.
Spiritually I feel as though I continue to evolve. I’ve written on this blog before about Christian faith, then Christian faith as a Queer person, then losing Christian faith and embracing Agnosticism.
The interesting thing about Yoga is that at its core it’s inherently theist. Patanjali writes in the Sutras about a connection to one’s self, connection to all of reality and also devotion to God.
I admittedly have given in to the belief that God is a construct, that humanity’s anthropological development drove them to create language around ultimate meaning which in turn gave us God/ Gods.
And while I still believe this, I also believe and know deep within that there is something greater, that there is ultimate meaning. I never stopped believing this actually. It’s just that I believe all language is inadequate to ascribe to God (if there is indeed a God) and that we will never truly “know for sure”.
I do, however, believe in myself, I believe in humanity…
I believe in the unseen also….breath, movement, love, consciousness, awareness, bliss, and the unbroken tether and oneness of all things. I believe in Life itself, as this dynamic all-encompassing force, which in my imagination very well be God….but that’s a rabbit hole that I won’t explore here at this time.
I believe in embracing the many narratives that humanity’s language has manifest as sacred.
So from the Holiness of Shiva in India to the blessing bestowal of the Orisha of West Africa, I want to honor it all and recognize it all as valid, while maintaining and holding with an open hand the inherent mystery, paradox, and silence of the one we imagine to be God.
The goal of Yoga is to be at one with self and to know that the self is simultaneously not a thing, and yet all things are one thing and awakening to the non-separateness of all things. That beautiful approach to life is what I am dedicating my life to in this season and hopefully for all the remaining seasons ahead.
There is only one time during my yoga practice where I was aware that all of myself and all of existence were one (and it didn’t happen during a headstand although I’m sure that’s possible ) and I live to see that moment again, and hopefully more often as I continue to have breath.
I desire a deeply connected, non attached life; because all of life is change, and I believe we navigate best through that change by holding all things with an open hand.
Thanks for stopping by.
Lightness and Light.
PS- Oprah’s Book, “What I know for Sure” is a really great read. It’s practical, and insightful and is really enjoyable on audio. Just 3 hours long.
insofewwordsblog 