The other night, I had a horrible dream. I dreamed that I had to teach an advanced yoga class, the kind that people come to because they like pain. There I was, up in front of a group of 20 women who looked less like yogis and more they just escaped from a tour of Cirque du Soleil that had recently passed through town. There I stood, all of them in their lithey fitness, and all of me in my..less than lithey fitness, and I was the one who had to lead them.
"Okay," I said as I clapped my hands together nervously. "Everybody know how to downward dog? Yeah? Okay let's do that one." It was awful. Flop sweat poured down my back. The class looked at me, shrugged, and did their downward dogs. While we all downward dogged, I suddenly realized that I had no clue what to do next. The very thought turned me ice cold in spite of the fact that I was projectile sweating. All the classes I'd been to, all the times I've done Sun Salutations, and here I was, bent over, head between my knees, pretty much kissing my own ass goodbye, no idea where to go from downward dog. We all stayed in that position for at least 10 full breaths before I silently tip-toed out of the room, ninja-like, while every one watched me leave.
I woke up covered in sweat. As the relief that I wasn't actually teaching an advanced yoga class to very thin women washed over me, I thanked my lucky stars that I would NEVER, EVER have to do anything like that EVER. Except I will, in 10 months, when I'm a yoga teacher.
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It doesn't take Freudian prowess to interpret my stressful yoga teaching dream. Not long ago, I attended a fire yoga master class at the studio where I'm studying to be a teacher. It was...well, frankly, it was embarrassing. It was not my best showing. Thirty minutes into the 2 1/2 hour class and I wanted to throw myself out the window just so I could feel some air moving around my skin. The stuffiness of the room, my natural tendency to feel faint when my head goes down and up too many times, and an overwhelming sense of nausea mingled with dread all combined to make me think that taking the class was a terrible, dreadful mistake.
Long story short, I got through it. I crossed the finish line, even though I couldn't put any weight on my arms by the end of the class. I flopped into my car and flopped my head back onto the seat while my fiance drove me home., where I flopped onto more flat surfaces until I finally flopped into bed.
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I don't know what compelled me to seek out yoga teacher training. Not that it came out of nowhere. Off and on for the past 8 years, I've adored practicing yoga. It's the only physical activity I've ever done that makes me feel like bowl of warm Jell-O bathed in sunshine and pooped on by unicorns afterward. I fell out with it for a few years while Life was Happening, but I returned to it after I quit smoking and got to the point where I could climb stairs without having to stop halfway to the top. It seemed like a good time to treat myself with some enjoyable movement.
At first, I used yoga videos on YouTube, not feeling ready to put myself in front of a group of well-trained yogis. Some of the videos I found were great, like the red-head who taught what she called "Fat Burning Yoga!!!!!!" in a space that was clearly a loft in the city, complete with sirens as the sound track. There was also a 90 minute video that I did a lot. I can't remember what it was called, but I think you can find it on Youtube by punching in "Total Ass Blowout Extreme Yoga TO THE MAX!" I couldn't sit down the day after the first time I used it. I tried every video over 40 minutes. EVERY. SINGLE. VIDEO. Even the weird Kundalini one with the married couple wearing one-piece body suits (I mean, I guess they were married. They both had the same last name, and it seems like it would've been....awkward if they were siblings). Even the "power yoga" one with the guy who looked like a pro-wrestler, wore sneakers, and had no discernible neck. Every day after work, I would slink up to the attic like it was my crack house, unroll my mat, find a new YouTube video, commence to sweating. That's when I remembered that years-old dream I once had of taking yoga teacher training, and how I wanted to help other people feel like warmed up Jell-O bathed in sunshine and unicorn feces.
Two weeks later, I was enrolled.
One year later, after a number of fits and starts, I went to my first training class.
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My first weekend of yoga teacher training was exactly how I thought it would be, and yet, so completely weird. A month or so before our first training weekend, all of us cadets got an assignment list with a million zillion assignments on it. I started chipping away it over Christmas week, thinking I'd get way ahead of the game by starting so early. Hey, I'd probably even be able to go back and read the assignments twice or maybe even three times! Oh, how fresh and naive I was back then. I ended up breaking off a rather large chunk of the assignment list and then having to hide the books in another room for a week so I could freak out about whether this whole yoga teacher training thing was such a good idea. I mean, really! I'm not young anymore. I have...what? Three jobs now? And a 10 year old? What was I thinking? There's so much homework and reading and Sanskrit words and...and...and. After I talked myself off that ledge (remembering that I'd already paid for the training helped, too), I diligently hit the books all over again, just like I never did in high school.
But back to the training. We sat on the wood floor in the studio for three hours for lecture time, something my back protested loudly over for the duration. I almost cried tears of joy when we stood up to work on poses.
Okay, I have a confession to make before I go any further. I have a hard time wrapping my head around the spiritual practice of yoga. I'm a serious skeptic. I'm that obnoxious friend who always has to put the snopes.com link in the comments section of your that post you shared of that 5-year-old boy who gets a free kidney transplant if you "Like" his picture 97 squazillion times. I recognize and accept that it may end up proving to be rather short-sighted of me in the long run. That's cool. Mad props to the whole "more things in heaven and Earth that are dreamt of in your philosophy Horatio" and stuff, but I'm not there. I've been burned by snake oil salesmen in the past, and I'm kind of a hard-sell when it comes to the metaphysical, so I struggled a bit with the texts that focused on the Sutras and energy types and things like that. The human anatomy textbooks, on the other hand, were a joy to read. Lift up your pantleg and I'll point out your lateral and medial malleoli. But I will stumble over the gunas of Rajas and Tamas in Ayurvedic medicine. But I'm an open-minded skeptic, if there can be such a thing. In other words, I'm open to the prospect of changing my mind, but it's going to take a ton of convincing.
Although I prefer getting down to the physical nitty-gritty of the poses and what muscles are involved, all of that might change next week. Who knows? I am open to anything and everything at this point. It's all on the table.
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So, I made it through the first weekend of training. My head didn't explode, I didn't spill coffee all over myself (intentionally avoiding bringing coffee with me helped a lot), my yoga pants didn't rip up the butt seam, and I didn't say anything terribly stupid. But it's only been one weekend. Only about 10 more to go. So many more opportunities to embarrass myself in front of a group of people, which is, apparently, what I love to do best.
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