Drives My Soul: With no further ado, here is an update!

Oops. It seems that rather than blogging I have been doing one or both or several at the same time of eating, falling asleep in posture clinic (this only happened once I swear), drinking many different liquids, falling asleep at the pool, studying, laughing manically, falling asleep at the beach, grocery shopping, taking yoga class, falling asleep in lecture (ok not as often as a lot of people), watching Bollywood movies into the wee hours of the morning (and somehow NOT being able to fall asleep through them), oh and sometimes falling asleep in my actual bed. In other words, it has been a hectic few weeks.

I don't even know where to begin really! There is so much I could talk about. I am supposed to be studying the last four postures right now! Instead I will blog. Procrastinasana. It remains my best and most well memorized posture.

So we have moved quickly with posture clinics. We still have three weeks left but I am quite certain that we will finish the dialogue by the end of the week. We keep hearing that we are the best teacher training yet, and this is another proof of why. We are fast! Some of the posture clinic leads have said that they have trouble finding things for us to work on because really we are just all doing so well. Of course there is always room for growth and improvement but I think we are pretty much all rock stars already. Posture clinics have mostly switched to being fun, where at first they were just mostly stressful. My group (Group 16) is the best group ever! I love everyone so so so much! We are all so supportive of each other and have such a good dynamic. I really enjoy suffering with these people in the same row twice a day in the yoga room and I really enjoy spending time with them each day in the posture clinic room. If any of you are reading this, I think you are all so wonderful and I am thankful to have met each and every one of you! I miss you already and we haven't even left yet! I had a laughing fit during posture clinic when I was demonstrating. Seriously, I was laughing so hard that I couldn't do the posture and I had tears in my eyes. We were supposed to be doing distractions for the girl delivering her dialogue and when I saw the guy next to me I just cracked up and then couldn't stop. Anyway, overall posture clinics have been going well for me. I have been learning the dialogue super fast this past week. Like 45 min per posture. Mind you they are much much shorter, but like my studio owner told me before I left, you start to learn much quicker as training goes on. She really was right about everything, not that I doubted anything she said, but I just believe it all so much more now that I have lived it.

Yoga classes have been up and down for me, as is to be expected, and just like everyone else. I am usually pretty stiff and exhausted in the morning classes. It takes me until Standing Bow to wake up and then I am mostly okay for the rest of class. The evening classes have been all over the place. I almost always practice at either 5:45 or 7:45 at home partially because of my work schedule and also because I enjoy practicing in the evening more. Here though sometimes my evening classes are fantastic and sometimes not so much. This past week I have felt nauseous mostly every time as soon as the floor series starts. I am not sure if it has to do with my diet, hydration or if it is all in my head. I am going to do a little experimenting this week to see what works. One of the classes was so bad that all I could do was lie completely still and use a mantra to tell myself that I felt fine and that I was okay. It worked; I didn't leave the room and I didn't throw up = success!

We had class taught by Juliana who is a fantastic and inspiring yogi whose blog I have been reading since before she went to teacher training. It was pretty amazing to take her class and see her in action after following her yoga career for the past couple of years! She is known as "the Dialogue Queen" and it was very apparent why during her class. She has the whole 26 and 2 down verbatim! So impressive! I also had the pleasure to introduce myself to her later that day. So cool!

Another favorite class of mine was taught by Balwan who is on staff here at Training. He is so fantastic that I can't even describe him to you. You can just tell he has a good soul and is a great person. He is from India but lives here in LA now and works at Headquarters. He was so excited and so enthusiastic to teach and his energy just radiated to all of us. He kept saying the funniest things, some of them unintentional, but English is his second language so it just turned out hilarious. Here are a few tidbits, some my go over your head if you are a non-practitioner: "Feet together my dear, H-E-E-L, feet." "If you are feeling dizzy and nauseous, that's what it feels like to fall in love...in love with yourself." "Eagle pose. Good for the sexual organs. Don't get excited." I think these have now become classics to live on forever. At least in my mind.

We had a very should I say, interesting, lecture by a man named Jon Burras. I can only describe them as... well interesting. Or odd. Yes probably a combination of the two. He talked a lot about some very unique ideas to do with the human body and the mind. Mostly none of his ideas had any research or scientific data behind them, they were just theories that he generated and that he believes in. I am very open to hearing new things but some of the ideas he talked about I just cannot support. I took notes the first day and did not take any the second day. In sum he said the word fascia approximately 300 times, this is not an exaggeration, one of my friends counted. Yea... I don't even know what more to say about him... He's a unique guy for sure and has some good ideas and some really not so good ones. He really upset a lot of people and had others totally captivated. The point I think, must have been to teach us to have an open mind and to understand that there are many other ideas out there than just those that we are familiar with. Hopefully those that were upset realize this.

I had three naps yesterday; please note if you ever decide to take Teacher Training that is what Saturdays are for: naps. Oh and eating. Obviously. First I napped in my room after morning class. Then we headed to Manhattan beach where I ate the best and biggest breakfast of my life and then immediately fell asleep on the beach afterward. I was there with 3 other girls and all four of us instantly fell asleep in a row on the sand. This was followed by grocery shopping and then I napped again back in my room. It should be noted that I fell asleep for this third nap at 6 pm, woke up at 10 pm for two hours, and then decided it was time for bed so I went to sleep at midnight. Quite successful I do think.

Does this post even make sense? I think that I have had both too much sleep and not enough sleep at the same time. Yes that is possible here at Teacher Training. Anything and Everything is possible.

Tomorrow is Halloween and we have a fun day ahead of us! First of all I bought myself a mini-pumpkin to decorate my mat with for class. Second we get to have a Halloween dance/pizza/costume party in the evening! I am so excited for this! Me and four others have some pretty awesome costumes planned out but you'll just have to wait until I post next to find out what! Don't worry I promise not to make you wait three weeks. They told us no Bikram costumes. Darn. I know that has been done in the past and would be super hilarious but sadly we are no longer allowed to dress up as Boss himself. So sad.

I think I will end this here and leave you with a few pictures! Thanks for reading!