Week four, done.

I didn't have a lot of time this week to do my daily posts. So rather than going back and posting about each individual day, I've decided to just reflect upon the week now as a whole. It seems that at this point in time, that is all I can really do, as the whole week at this point seems to have been just a surreal blur. I'm glad I'm blogging these days because I have a feeling I'm going to look back at this experience five weeks from now feeling the same way... a surreal blur. I don't have much to say about the specifics of what happened, so instead I'll just write what's been marinating...

It's been an interesting week, each one more inexplicable and somehow more complicated than the last. They say that your yoga practice at any given day or time is so much more than a document of that moment. That this individual experience is a culmination of every other moment you have spent, good and bad, on the mat prior. I feel like that's how my days at training have been as well, and would take this a step further to argue that perhaps the current moments on and off the mat also contain bits and pieces of the future as well. Presence. A little Hiroshima Mon Amour. And at this moment in time, I feel like these moments aren't so much building me up, but rather stripping away parts of me, leaving something incredibly raw behind. It is what it is, and I feel like I really am learning to live each time I take a moment to step back and observe everything.

It is only through the consistency of practice (or is it the practice of consistency?) that one can find their true selves in the discrepancies that happen.... I need to think more about this. Sometimes I write shit and then wonder what the hell it means.

As of today, I have used up all the dialogue I have memorized prior to coming to training. And since training has begun, I have struggled to memorize anything new. I'm just so out of my learning element here. For the past five years, at the very least, I have molded myself into a certain type of learner. Most of my learning and honing of information has been practiced under very specific circumstances. I'm a visual and kinesthetic learner, and that I have realized mostly through my experiences in college. But what I have realized here is that I am also first and foremost a solitary learner. Yes, I need small groups to form a certain foundation of my ideas, and yes, I depend upon others to deliver and truly solidify the concepts that I have arrived upon. But this process in between, the process of bridging gaps, of learning to know, and most importantly, of memorizing, I must do on my own and on my own terms. I don't know how to truly describe how I've been able to memorize everything verbatim up until this point, I just know that the environment that I have found myself in is completely opposite to what I have trained myself to do.

This week, I have been forcing myself to unlearn how I learn as a means of surviving these posture clinics. And it seems that altering the way one does things after so many years is so much more difficult than learning from scratch when not having a way to begin with. Regardless of how many reasons or excuses I can form for not being able to memorize more however, I know I must go on and do the best I can. This is tough for me because I have become so used to doing things a certain way, my way, to ensure success, or at least as little failure as possible.

A great lesson I learned this week was that sometimes I just need to let things happen. That striving for perfection is ok, but it is also ok when one doesn't hit the mark they have aimed for. That setting an intention is an end in itself, and that regardless of whatever happens, it is the intention that matters. And that is something I'm going to have to keep reminding myself of. Something new I must begin practicing. So that whatever happens from this point on is ok as long as I set my intentions and do the best I can. Both on and off the mat.

What has given me hope through my challenging moments, especially this week, is the incredible support I have felt from my peers, my mentors, my yoga family (thank you so much Carrie Bain, for stopping by and for bringing love). One really does have to go through hell to get to heaven... and I have come to appreciate a little yang in the yin. There always is a silver lining, even if we have to squint to see it. And adversity is thrown upon us only to make us stronger, to make us more us. Just as a hero in a movie cannot be a hero unless given the context and opportunities to be one, we cannot be human unless we are given these moments and chances to be so.