No more waiting. The day had finally arrived for our first yoga teacher training class. It was slightly surreal since I’d been blogging about it for the last 3 months.
In our group of 12 women, there was a good cross-section of age, yoga experience and reasons for being there. A little shy at first, we did the mandatory round of introductions. After that, Dianne helped us break the ice with a human puzzle challenge. Crossing left arm over right and then linking hands so that we formed a circle facing each other, could we untwist our crossed arms and still face each other when done? According to the timer, it took us 6 minutes to figure it out. Dianne said that when she took her teacher training, the group took 30 minutes before the instructor finally told them to stop.
Those six hours flew by. Dianne was organized and well-prepared. We had plenty of time to discuss, play, practice asanas and take a break, without rushing through anything. I liked that. It takes a lot of effort to prep course material and I appreciated all of it.
I’m a bit sore from all the chaturangas that we did. Happily sore. It was hard to know if I was keeping my shoulder blades aligned so they stayed flat on my back but I think I’m starting to understand how to do it properly now. Her advice was to place two yoga blocks on the floor directly underneath my shoulders and then lower down without touching them. Dianne was drilling this concept into us in order to avoid shoulder injuries to the rotator cuff.
Got the homework piling up already. Lots of reading and journalling. Can’t forget to practice some type of yoga daily (asanas, meditation, pranayama) either. Yoga philosophy intensive is being held this weekend, on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Can’t wait!
