Why I am going to teacher training.
I've always loved to teach. When I went to college, i was torn between teaching and business and chose business, then when i was about to embark on the CPA track I threw it all away to follow may passion, run professionally and own a running store. Well let's just say that owning a retail store with no money and no experience was a disaster and almost killed me... literally. Got my MBA and became a commercial lender and then I saw an ad for a private school teacher, no teaching degree needed so I jumped at it. Loved it. I taught math and coached the best group of middle school kids. It was exhausting but invigorating. The trouble was I had to go to school to get my teaching degree at night while teaching and still trying to run professionally. Then an opportunity came up to follow my sister up to Cape Cod and be coached by one of the best marathon coaches at the time. Off I went and after a year of injuries i ended up in Banking and with a lot of luck ended up rising to CFO at the best bank on the Cape, so my teaching career never quite happened.
That being said, I've had several opportunities to lead and motivate groups in many different sports, cause i just like doing it. I'm always amazed at how tough people are and how hard they work with a little group energy and someone just to get the group together, lead them and offer a little advice occasionally. There is something within me that enjoys noticing and figuring out how people might be able to improve, through tweaks in technique, strategy, or lifestyle. most of them I keep to myself. Just notice it all the time.
So my history always has led me down a path of someday somehow molding my passion for fitness with my passion to teach.
But Bikram...Well Bikram is so special to me. First of all, I don't like to do things that i'm not naturally good at. So yoga is a big challenge. A humbling but a rewarding experience to do something that I am not good at...stick with it and accept that i'll never be great at it. I'll just be me at it and a better me month by month. See, my philosophy in life has always been to focus on things I'm good at.
It is a different experience to work hard at something you are gifted at. For me it was sports, particularly running. I was always gifted from very little with great speed, an exceptional cardiovascular system, and a certain tenacity for hard work. But working hard at something where you are gifted at it is a little bit different. I worked really really hard but it is a different kind of work when the underlying thing comes easy to you. Sure running 140 miles a week year after year is not easy, but I loved to run. Running was easy, so working at running was easy. I can probably bet most of the people at the Yoga Championships are gifted at yoga so working hard is a little different for them.
I digress... Bikram yoga speaks to me in the language I speak. It is hard. It is the same everyday so you can actually work on getting better. Of course I love things that are the same. It relies on focus, determination, acceptance, and breath. But mostly Bikram Yoga makes me happy inside my head. It is all a metaphor for life for me. It is that, more than the fabulous way it makes my body feel that motivates me to want to teach and share the gift that Bikram has brought to me on to others. What i know about the yoga today, is that the metaphors for me will be different than the person next to me. We all need different things, some need more flexibility others strength ( and I don't mean just physically). Some need to push harder and not give up so easy, others need to try less and not judge themselves so hard. Some of us need to smile more so we get teachers that make us smile and laugh. Or we need to be pushed more or we need teachers to call us on our ego where we give up technique for pride. All these things I notice. And I notice what i think i know today is only a little piece of the knowledge yet to be opened to me. Kind of like how you hear the dialogue day after day and one day, the same words enlighten you to something new you never heard before.
So I'm not that freaked about training, I'm more nervous about teaching because i want to be more than a good teacher I want to be a great teacher and I know that will take years and years. I'm not very patient. Don't we all want to be great right away. I have accepted not being great at the yoga and just letting it take me on a long journey. I need to try and do that with my teaching. Accept that I won't be great right away and just travel my teacher journey on a path wherever it leads
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
March 20, 2012
March 20, 2012
Like most things, I'm a little hesitant to get started because once I start, I know my all or nothing mindset will take hold. I'm also not much of a writer. I was always one of those students that wrote dry boring papers but got a good grade because I wrote in the exact format as instructed. Very clinical...no heart. So my dilemma in starting this blog was to figure out how i was going to write it. Was I going to write it knowing that i would have a broad audience meaning a certain amount of mental censorship before it hit the page or was I going to write it as a stream of consciousness, exposing all the frailties and vulnerabilities of my personal psyche. Well after a pre-class yoga room discussion; (kind of like a couch session) I decided that it would be best if I applied some screening to the voices of all my little demons that run around in my head. Certainly, i'll try to be a little more enjoyable than reading the manual to your car hope to even chronicle not only what the daily life of living in the bubble is like, but also how I am dealing with the stress of it all, the highs and lows etc.
So just a little note on where I'm at with only 24 days until I head out to LA. Wow, it is creeping up ever so quickly like a snowball rolling down hill. (Only i would make reference to a snowball when it is 70 degrees on Cape Cod on the first day of spring). I haven't really stressed out about the training, which is so unlike me when I going somewhere with little control. I know enough about teacher training to know it is going to be wicked hard with some extreme highs and lows. Since I can't predict what will cause the lows there is nothing i can do to try and mitigate them so I just have to accept whatever happens as it happens. It is so unlike me! I just have to keep my mantra handy..."don't let anybody steal your peace then you are the loser"
Stuff like food, and lack of sleep, totally depleting my body all niggle in the back of my mind as things that will break me down at some time during the training. I just am trying to accept that I will have moments of breakdown and it is about bouncing back, not trying to avoid. All these thoughts run through my head.
Of course, i'm generally a non-social person until i get to know people and get totally overwhelmed by too much stimuli so being around 400 gregarious, social, friendly people with different personalities and communication styles will probably be my biggest challenge the first couple of weeks.
I have made it up to spine twist on the dialogue and go back over and over and over the postures I already learned. Not anywhere near perfect but I'm pretty comfortable with having memorized it pretty close so i can work on delivery during posture clinics.
Well my first post. The difficult thing about blogging is that I don't have time to go back and edit so what you see is what you get...bad spelling, grammar, and a runon of nothingness.
Like most things, I'm a little hesitant to get started because once I start, I know my all or nothing mindset will take hold. I'm also not much of a writer. I was always one of those students that wrote dry boring papers but got a good grade because I wrote in the exact format as instructed. Very clinical...no heart. So my dilemma in starting this blog was to figure out how i was going to write it. Was I going to write it knowing that i would have a broad audience meaning a certain amount of mental censorship before it hit the page or was I going to write it as a stream of consciousness, exposing all the frailties and vulnerabilities of my personal psyche. Well after a pre-class yoga room discussion; (kind of like a couch session) I decided that it would be best if I applied some screening to the voices of all my little demons that run around in my head. Certainly, i'll try to be a little more enjoyable than reading the manual to your car hope to even chronicle not only what the daily life of living in the bubble is like, but also how I am dealing with the stress of it all, the highs and lows etc.
So just a little note on where I'm at with only 24 days until I head out to LA. Wow, it is creeping up ever so quickly like a snowball rolling down hill. (Only i would make reference to a snowball when it is 70 degrees on Cape Cod on the first day of spring). I haven't really stressed out about the training, which is so unlike me when I going somewhere with little control. I know enough about teacher training to know it is going to be wicked hard with some extreme highs and lows. Since I can't predict what will cause the lows there is nothing i can do to try and mitigate them so I just have to accept whatever happens as it happens. It is so unlike me! I just have to keep my mantra handy..."don't let anybody steal your peace then you are the loser"
Stuff like food, and lack of sleep, totally depleting my body all niggle in the back of my mind as things that will break me down at some time during the training. I just am trying to accept that I will have moments of breakdown and it is about bouncing back, not trying to avoid. All these thoughts run through my head.
Of course, i'm generally a non-social person until i get to know people and get totally overwhelmed by too much stimuli so being around 400 gregarious, social, friendly people with different personalities and communication styles will probably be my biggest challenge the first couple of weeks.
I have made it up to spine twist on the dialogue and go back over and over and over the postures I already learned. Not anywhere near perfect but I'm pretty comfortable with having memorized it pretty close so i can work on delivery during posture clinics.
Well my first post. The difficult thing about blogging is that I don't have time to go back and edit so what you see is what you get...bad spelling, grammar, and a runon of nothingness.
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