I’ve been practicing yoga for about 20 years, but my journey to becoming a yogi has been a priority of mine in the last 3 years. The transition to yogi for me meant to fully embody the practice, not just in the hour long class at a studio, but in my everyday life. In this blog I want to chat about my yoga teacher training, the amazing yogi I have been practicing with, and what I have learned from practicing at home during COVID.
Teacher training
I had been looking for a lot of different yoga teacher training when starting my yogi journey, and I decided to do my training through Corepower Yoga since they do a 200-hour training. I was really happy that I did go through Corepower, I really loved the structure of their classes and I really enjoy the ability to have consistency in the practice to help me develop and grow. When you’re in yoga that constantly changes, you are just a student of that class. When you get into a class that has a very similar structure each time and doesn’t vary, then you start seeing how you are developing. In the same pose day over day, you can see how you’re progressing, changing, and developing. Everybody at Corepower is trained in the same way and focuses on proper alignment and joint health. This in itself is important to me, but the consistency of practice at this studio is what ultimately made me choose this studio.
When I got my training there, I met someone very special and his name is Joshua. He taught several of the classes in my teacher training, and he has a great foundation in philosophy and a background in anatomy. I really loved just being a student in his class, and the most exciting thing for me on Sundays was always to go to his class. It’s a funny thing, when I think about his name, I immediately think of the song “Take Me To Church” by Hozier, because that’s what Joshua’s yoga class is like for me on a Sunday morning. He brings things that are going on in our world that can be very conflicting to a place of balance and harmony. He brings it to you on your mat where you can actually process what’s going on in the outside world through yoga. He is able to bring together a community that’s very diverse in background, views and opinions into processing together.
Practicing again
I’ve been wanting to go back to Joshua’s class on Sundays, but due to COVID-19 my yoga studio has been closed. I had to develop my own practice at home, and I realized that I couldn’t have developed my own practice if it hadn’t been for the skills that the classroom has taught me. This weekend I was able to “go to church” with Joshua, he is now teaching classes outside and I was able to get together for his class at Kate Sessions Park overlooking the ocean. He brought a beautiful message to the practice, and I would love to invite you all to come to his live classes at the park. Find his schedule here.
When we have an instructor like him who can help take us through the journey, we can get a lot deeper personally and get more connected to a diverse community and help find balance and peace to deal with the things that are happening in our world. We don’t pretend that the things in the world aren’t happening, it is more of coming together and dealing with what we need to get through as a community. Reach out to me if you would like to come to his classes with me!
from my practice this morning:
When we’re working on creating victory in our lives, we have to make space for that. Waiting for victory to happen, or chasing fires and hoping victory will come of it does not work. When we are able to get preventative, putting our mindfulness and self-care in front of everything, then we get to actually sort out how the victory is going to happen. It allow us to create the space, have clarity and develop a structure so we know exactly how our day is going to look in order to be victorious. Then we have the power and grace in things to happen the way that we intend for them to happen.
We’ve been watching Alone on Amazon Prime, and there is a certain mentality that I’ve been seeing on that show that is similar to people who have a dedicated practice or are successful entrepreneurs, and it’s the ability to get their mind right. The background of the show is that 10-15 survival experts are left in a remote location with 10 items and are told to survive. There is no time limit, there is no interaction. Just survive, and if you want to leave, then call for help. Some left because of an injury, a broken heart, or just not being able to battle their internal demons. The ones who stay and win the show are the ones who are able to keep trying and create new strategies, new plans, and keep innovating until the last day when they win the $500,000. That shows so much about mindset, it’s not about always doing the right thing, but it’s about always having intention and creating victories for yourself, rather than trying to let someone else do it for you.