Check check...

Bikram Yoga Teacher Training Checklist

-highlighters, pens- mark the hell out of your dialogue, it really helps!

-clothing rack to dry your clothes on

-a shopping bag on wheels for trips to the store without a car

-hot water maker/boiler, what are those things called?

-hot plate/small grill to cook with

-plates, utensils, paper towels, etc
-knife and cutting board

-tupperware
-extension cord... you might need more sockets to plug your stuff into if you plan on bringing applicances, laptops, phones, etc.
--camera

-snacks for lecture/posture clinics etc.
-eat what you crave while you're there. Random, but a lot of us craved salt and vinegar chips!

-Extra ice chest: get ice from non-TT floors, those usually aren't empty

-Tea/Coffee

-HYDROFLASK(S)

-travel blanket/small pillow- it gets cold during the late night lectures

-ear plugs

-chocolate

-electrolytes: honey/lemon/water, supplements or powders, coconut water, etc.

-"No Sweat"

-something to throw on over your yoga clothes before/after class

-more yoga clothes that you could teach in, for posture clinics

-some brought foam rollers or tennis balls
-comfortable footwear/ flip flops
-epsom salts
-essential oils (my mom swears by these... you can apply them topically to alleviate the soreness, some brands you can digest, helping boost your immune system, amongst many other benefits. something that came in really handy during training)

-some cash to tip the valet for helping you carry your stuff upstairs on day 1. You don't want to be hauling all that stuff and making that many trips up and down, conserve your energy- you'll be needing all of it soon :)

-A warm sweatshirt

-notebook to take notes/doodle/ and write dialogue in

-a journal or blog... reading through my posts from training, though only a couple months have passed, everything is coming back and its crazy how much one forgets because it seems like such a surreal blur

-a mantra, or something that you can remind your self when times get tough

Oh and Good Thai food. We'd call them before the 5pm class and would ask them to deliver at 7.

http://www.ayarathaicuisine.com/#/home 

Week 9, certified!!

Week eight, can you believe it??

We've been in this yoga bubble for so long that I've forgotten about life before teacher training. It's difficult to fathom that this coming Friday, we will officially be certified Bikram teachers. I don't feel like I'm ready to call myself that, to actually step onto the podium and teach a 90 minute class. But then again, I didn't feel  like I was ready to come to teacher training eight weeks ago either, and look where we are today! We surprise ourselves sometimes, both on and off the mat. And often times, it takes not thinking about things and just letting it all happen.

Monday was our last posture clinic. It was also the beginning of the brief moments to come where I would catch myself thinking about how far we've come, about how much we have grown, and about how much I'm going to miss moments that have come to make up our current reality. It is incredible to witness how people in my posture clinic group have found their voices, gained confidence in their teachings, and have come to even enjoy getting up there to share the dialogue we have memorized. I don't have the exact words for it, but I guess its part pride and part happiness for my fellow trainees in witnessing the great strides they have taken. To see people go through this metamorphosis and to have the privilege of sharing this experience with them, that it what has made the sweat, tears, and long nights worth it. And I now understand why so many teachers choose to come back to teacher training on their own dime, as well as where their sense of bittersweet nostalgia comes from. Four weeks ago, I thought they were all crazy. Now, I see that they're human. Perhaps a little crazy still. After all, this is Bikram Yoga.

So four more yoga days until this becomes a memory of the past that will probably creep up in my future presents as my time at teacher training. How strange is that? I'm looking forward to ending this chapter and beginning the next one, as nerve-wracking as it may be.

Some Bikram quotes...

Do you think I am a normal human being? ... Now the question is, how not normal?
I don't like cold food, I don't like cold hearts, and I don't like cold pussy!
But anyway, don't do anything to take away my concentration! I'm going to kill you now.

Bikram last night...

"What's going on in the left side corner? Somebody is doing silent but deadly or something??"

Bikram, this week.

Wow. There's two kinds of drinks. Hot chocolate and honey lemon... which one do I want? Hot chocolate... (takes a sip) Faaaaantastic!
You can't finish class in one hour. Its like high school sex. No good!
Why your heart hate your lungs? Its a horrible marriage. Between an asshole and a bitch.
Hey! Don't throw up on here. Its a new fucking carpet.
Now. The wise man comes. His name is...? BIKRAM!
I'm a combination of English bulldog and Bengal Tiger. Don't mess with me!
Like yesterday, I had to ask you guys 100 times to stop because you kept talking... Ok I exaggerate a little- I'm Indian!
And to the young lady who fell asleep during lecture with her legs uncrossed... Hellooo! I can see your uterus!
Operation successful. Patient is dead. Doctors are proud. Because they get paid by the Blue Cross!
I sell pain! Can you believe it??
Don't you know you can't make a clap with one hand? You need two hands, you idiot.
On Raja Yoga... You're all practicing it right now. When you go home, are you going to rob a bank? Are you going to kill somebody? Are you going to take revenge on your ex-husband? Chop his balls off and play ping pong with it?...maybe...

Week five, done?

The lovely people I spend my posture clinics with: Group 20

My, how the days have flown by... Where did this week go?

I've always been known to have a skewed sense of the time-space continuum, never really have been able to measure how much time has passed or have a general notion of the distance and navigation between two locations and whatnot... but I feel like now more than ever, here more than anywhere else, my sense of time and space has absolutely gone at the window, and I don't even know where that window is. It's quite bizarre, really.

Being at teacher training, with this fixed schedule consisting of two yoga classes, two meals, and two clinics/lectures a day has really altered the way I live my current life. Pauline turned to me yesterday and asked me what the date was, and as I reached for my phone to check, I realized that these numbers have stopped mattering. That the last time I checked,  it was mid-April. And here we are, more than a month into training. Yes, I've been counting the weeks that have passed, and the weeks we have left, but I haven't stopped to actually think about the date... the season... that four weeks from now, when we're teaching and looking out the window of our studios, it will be Summer... holy shit.

We've been in this hotel, bouncing between the second and sixth floor, without ever really spending time outdoors, and there is this whole world going on around us...That's another thing about being in this yoga bubble... one never really knows what's happening in the real world. I forget... and then today I remembered, the Honors Program just held a graduation ceremony for our second cohort, the Icelandic volcano has erupted again (bringing back memories of my year in Oxford... again, presence), my favorite tv shows are tying up their seasons... again, there is a whole world going on around us! And here we are, running around like crazed, sweaty, monkeys worrying about words on a page and how much electrolytes to take in. My world has gotten so much bigger, yet physically, it barely extends the boundaries of my mat and this hotel. And when I put all the pieces together, sit back, and think about it, I am for once at a loss of words...

That's when it dawned on me that this is actually happening... that all those months I've been getting excited and freaking out and reading other people's blogs about teacher training have passed, and now, its my turn. And we're actually doing it! I'm no longer preparing for training, no longer just starting the training process... This is it. We're here. And to quote Pennylane of Almost Famous, "Its all happening!". Its all happening, and I didn't even realize it was happening and how much time has passed, because we've been so caught up in the moment. We've trained ourselves to be so present that we, most of the time, forget even our own names and how we arrived at this point. Like a constant meditation. How strange is that?

Its been a wild, wild ride. And I have a feeling its just going to get even more insane from this point on. I'm bracing myself, and trying my best to keep up with the pace.... but sometimes, the best and simplest thing one can do is to let go and just give in.

And breathe. 

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.

Week four, day one.

Morning class was taught by a visiting teacher from Kansas. Good class but I feel like I'm getting more and more stiff as each Monday comes. Perhaps its because the room hadn't been used for a while, but Monday classes typically seem a little cooler than normal. Having barely broken a sweat, I vowed that I would move to a more heated part of the room during the afternoon class.

We took our Anatomy midterm today before posture clinic. I have never laughed so hard during a test in my life. We were sitting there in rows, trying to be quiet, but kept finding ourselves being interrupted by accidental noise. Like the sound of my mom's thermos gurgling as she sipped on it, her fanning herself intensely with her finished test because the room was too stuffy (or was it menopause?), and her need to put her face against the laminated page containing her dialogue and recite into it in an attempt to not disturb those still taking the test around us. Ok maybe not so much accidental noise, but mostly just my mother and her noise. Aaron/Cheese (Our new friend from Wisconsin), Beau (Our fellow BY at the Camp trainee), and I just couldn't keep ourselves from laughing like school kids. To the point where a couple staff members had to shush us and flock over to make sure we weren't cheating or wreaking havoc, while trying to figure out what all the fuss was about.

My mom then proceeded to hold a tissue up to her nose to blow, but now aware of what a ruckus she was inadvertently causing in our corner, couldn't bring herself to, for fear of perpetuating the distraction and getting even more glares at those around us. That's when we lost it. She used that moment as an opportunity to properly blow her nose, while our laughter ( and I mean tears in eyes and can't catch my breath laughter) masked the sound and drew even more glares our way. Just when we were able to take some deep (at least six counts) breaths and calm ourselves down, Beau's stomach let out a huge grumble. At this point, we really couldn't contain ourselves... absolutely hysterical. And that was how we got kicked out.

Just kidding.

Afternoon class was taught by Diane Ducharme. Such a nice surprise, especially since we've gotten used to expecting Rajashree to teach the afternoon classes whenever Bikram isn't around. As promised, I moved away from my comfort zone and found a much more heated spot for my mat. There were definitely moments where I found myself wondering why the hell I made this decision, but it felt so good to be properly bending and sweating again. I walked out of my class, empty coconut water container and drenched towel in hand, with the biggest smile on my face. For once, in a really long time, my Bikram class did exactly what it was supposed to do, give me more energy coming out than going in. And that made the brief moments of struggle and minor anxiety completely worth it.

I enjoyed my comfort zone/ money spot for the past week, but part of me just doesn't feel like its Bikram without a little bit of an "oh shit, what am I doing here?" moment. I think I'm going to continue to give my comfort zone a break this week. After all, we're here for the challenge. And if it were smooth sailing most of the way through, this process just wouldn't be worth it.

Looking forward to tomorrow. Carrie Bain, my amazing studio owner (BYEG), will be joining us. And its always a such a pleasure being around her.

"Bang bang" -E.C.

What Rajashree read to us in Savasana

The Invitation

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon.
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true.
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, 'Yes.'

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

-Oriah Mountain Dreamer