Heart Full

I was dubious when we were introduced to the doshas — an Ayurvedic system that (in loose terms) identifies your constitution. It sounded a lot like the gunas to me — the tendencies. And I’m still not 100% clear on exactly what the differences are between the two. But we got a thorough introduction to the doshas, and just like our teacher promised once explained the system “just makes sense“. I discovered that at this point in my life I am Kapha Vata. Meaning my primary dosha is Kapha — think 1st and 2nd Chakra — earth and water — I’m cold, heavy, wet, dense and oily. My Vata side is air, lightness — think quick, spontaneous, but dry and rough. In many ways my two sides are opposites. When my Kapha is out of balance i have phlegm, I sleep excessively and I’m practically immobile. I can’t count the number of times when my husband came home from a full day and was shocked to realize I had laid in bed ALL day, watching the entire first, second, and third season of Lost, only to decide after watching all of that … that I didn’t really like the series. On the other hand when my vata is effective, there’s never too many things for me to multi-task. If the vata gets out of balance, I become obsessed and I don’t sleep. And this can last for days, everyone from my room mate in college to my neighbor has asked me, “how do you operate without sleep?!” and I usually answer, “there’s too much to do.” But I know these are the times I’m running on empty.
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I’ve always been a big fan of journaling, I feel it gives you some much needed time for introspection. I find that writing things down helps me add clarity to some otherwise very muddy thoughts. So it makes sense that journaling is part of our training, but with that special Lotus twist. We’re encouraged to POUR out our thoughts, “don’t lift the pen from the paper if you can help it“. So for 2-5 furious minutes some yogis are frantically writing, while others like myself are drawing blanks. But the questions resonated with me, so even if we’re not in class, I took them home and thought about them. Each one is deserving of pages and pages of journaling but one haunted my mind, because I couldn’t answer it, “why do you teach?”. Such a simple question that you would think I’d have answered by now seeing as I am IN the 300 hour teacher training program.

The answer for the 200 hour program was so clear, I wanted to learn how to teach my friends and family, so that maybe they could experience the healing powers of yoga the way I did. I wanted them to feel the ecstatic liberation of a pain free body, the deliciousness of a sweet svasana, or the beauty in the movement. Were these still my reasons? Yes, my friends in family are in fact my best students, I love waking up and teaching them. But do I really need to be in a studio to teach them? Probably not.

The easiest answer for me is because I want to share what I’ve learned with others. I don’t know if that’s totally true. If I truly wanted to share there are probably better ways to do it, for example I’m probably reaching more people with this blog than I am in my still not-very-populated classes. I think I’m teaching for myself, because by learning how to teach I’m able to offer something more, more of myself, more of a service. And that has been making me feel whole.

It’s funny the things you don’t notice are missing from your practice (and by extension life) until someone points it out. And when they do, it’s that “ah-hah” moment when a million new possibilities flash in your mind all at once. The missing ingredient was ritual. I had disdained ritual in my 20s primarily because it reminded me of somber catholic ceremonies which I only participated in under duress. As I got older, I’ve become more spiritual and no longer actively avoid ceremony. But I still don’t incorporate much ritual in my life. My food is eaten without thanks,  special dates like anniversaries approach without notice and then at the last minute are haphazardly celebrated. In fact not only do I NOT notice / incorporate any ritual in my life, I actually don’t like many of the ones I have to participate in, like birthdays, bridal showers, and other “Hallmark Holidays”. It always seems like the drama outweighs any benefits. But then, as our teacher pointed out life ends up just passing you by without any punctuation of meaningful moments.

She encouraged us to create rituals in our lives. To build the alter. To learn the deities and be inspired by them. To celebrate ourselves, because we are GODDESSES. To remember that time passes, events happen, and we should take a moment to acknowledge those transformations. Even better she dressed up our third eyes, a small act that made everyone visibly brighten, even my husband remarked that it was “neat“.  While I’m not ready to call myself a goddess just yet — (though i did float the title to my boss just to test the waters), I think there are small things I can do to add rites back in my life.  First, I explored my neighborhood and found inspirations of divinity.  I saw that at the local church there was an advertisement for an upcoming exhibit, it read:

* I AM , the bread of life

* I AM, the light of the world

* I AM, the gate

* I AM, the good shepard

* I AM, the resurrection and the life

* I AM, the way, the truth, and the life

* I AM, the true vine.

And I couldn’t help but notice that this was very much like the mantra, SoHum. — I AM that. Lovely.

The first week came and went so fast, it’s a strain to remember it. But I know that after one weekend with these 17 other students, I felt a connection. This was unexpected for me. During my 200 hour training class it took us awhile to build up a sense of camaraderie, a casual sharing of  ”my mat is your mat”. I would say it took us somewhere between week 6-8. Not that we didn’t get along, or have intimate sharing sessions, we just were missing a connection. Our teacher noticed it too, she commented that many of the teacher trainings she’s done the yoginis tended to hang out outside of training. Not so with us, it seemed that outside our love for yoga we really didn’t have that much to talk about it. After our teacher training, a couple of us became good friends, and in fact one of my close friends now, Yadana — is from my 200 hour teacher training.But in this training, after just one weekend I felt like I already knew each and every one yogi, and I liked them. It was as if exactly the right mix of people got together for this journey.