This shit is no joke!

Ok. My bad. I'll admit it. I had no idea how hard yoga was. Everything about it. Learning it, practicing it, teaching it. I am realizing that I never gave my yoga teachers near enough credit for all the time, sweat, mental energy, and planning that goes into facilitating a good practice. Remembering the cuing, and the sequencing, and the timing. Putting together the playlist, or choosing words and asanas that speak to a specific theme. Speaking to the chakras, or making sure students have properly stretched all the right muscles to get into various peak poses. Reminding myself that their right is my left. Watching the clock to make sure I'm respecting class start and end times. When to inhale, when to exhale. There is just so so much to keep track of. I literally spent 4 hours planning a 1 hour class that I did at my sister-in-law's house for 2 people. Here are 2 of my 4 pages of notes! And there were drafts and drafts before the final versions you see here (half of which I promptly forgot to follow once I actually started teaching!).

While it is is a ton of work for little or no pay, it rewards me in ways that far exceed monetary value. It has taught me empathy, and self-respect, and discipline. It has pushed me to edges I didn't even know I had. On my mat I have felt beautiful and confident and strong and safe. I have also cried my head off more than a few times while stuck in frog pose, or surrendering to shavasana. I love how yoga lets you move and makes you stay. How there is always a new place to take your practice and those familiar poses to which you can return with ease. It truly is a sanctuary for me.

I'm excited and petrified to announce that on January 27 I will be teaching my first official community class at Praxis Fiber Workshop on Waterloo and then starting in February I will be teaching a donation based community class once a month at Harmony Studios in Downtown Willoughby. Watching how yoga brings people home to themselves is...well...I have no words...(and I always have words). I am so pumped to be a part of that connection.