Hello fellow friends! It’s been a hop, skip, and a jump since I’ve last posted here but I’m glad I took this time off to work on my own personal practice and defining new goals for myself after graduating YTT.

Spending time working through my own hurdles, wasn’t just a choice but a much needed period of alone time that was keeping me afloat after an infected gum & root canal, new job, and the additional hours of YTT hours that I needed to complete.

If I were to sum up my YTT program experience in a nutshell, I would say that I came out with more questions than answers and more ideas than solutions. The last 4 weeks of the program tested my beliefs of the kind of teacher I wanted to become, let alone if I wanted to teach at all in a traditional studio setting.

My initial expectations were that the training would make me more skilled in teaching vinyasa and asana-based classes and give me the confidence to teach right off the bat.

Instead, I became more immersed in the restorative yoga practices, aimed more at breathwork and meditation than postures. I started to come to terms that the type of teacher I would become is one that works more in workshop settings and private lessons. I realized the value in teaching a smaller group in a setting that is dedicated to developing mindfulness and awareness rather than it being a bonus add-on.

All of these new ideas and decisions didn’t come to me overnight. In fact, it took more 4 more months of deep-self inquiry and written reflection to begin to comprehend where my passions and talents merged.

Does this seem like a slow turn around for you?

Well, one concept that reigns true throughout the yogic philosophy is that learning takes time. And as a yoga student, you will be taught to see life as a never-ending learning journey.

My advice for those looking into programs? Get to know the studio, get to know the teacher, get to know your goals, and enter into it knowing that it is just the very start of your career. 

What helped me get through my YTT training during a challenging time in my life, was the application of the principles I read in my books to my life.

Patience & Resilience

YTT can teach you about the philosophies, the ancient teachings, the modern interpretations, asana building,and  breath work in the classroom setting. But what I consider to be one of the most valuable aspects of such training,  when you truly know that your efforts of learning, digesting, and applying are paying off, is when you begin to build skills outside of the studio & your yoga mat.

How much patience do you typically have after a long day of work? Or after driving through traffic? How do you react when you have no time to rest (or so you think) and you’re just moving from one triggering or energy-consuming situation to another?

Do you react with patience? With an open heart and no expectations?

Patience with my own growth and my own journey was crucial to combat my innate desires for instant change. I no longer had enough downtime to myself to waste time with impatient behavior that usually led to frustration and disappointment. I had to be more conscious of how I spent my time and how I was reacting to the events in my life.

This required not only additional effort placed into developing the skill of patience but, as a result of having to go against internal and inevitable resistance, also developing more resiliency.

Typically when we think about patience or resiliency we imagine an external situation where we are up against a problematic situation or problematic person that is causing us some level of discomfort. However, the real gold lies in applying these skills internally. Facing yourself and declaring that your will is stronger than your external environment.

Kriya Yoga

Kriya yoga is practice in action and was defined by Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras by three personal practices called niyamas.

The Three Niyamas

• Tapas- deliberate & conscious action
• Svadhyaya- self-inquiry & reflection
• Isvara-pranidhana- Faith in the universe

By working on my own patience and resilience I was putting into action the first two niyamas of Kriya yoga. But following my intuition and staying consistent with my personal practice wasn’t easy. When fear and doubt would creep in again sometimes I wasn’t capable of being as patient as I would have liked to be; sometimes I didn’t have a clear enough mind for real unbiased self-inquiry. And sometimes I really lost my faith in the power of the universe.

Nonetheless, no matter how many times I faltered, or felt weak, I kept coming back to the practice of Kriya yoga.

What Yoga is Not

Yoga is not and never has been about wearing the nicest matching clothes to do a mouth-dropping one-handed twisted handstand (this is not a real pose, but you get my point) while echoing “OM!”. Yoga’s mainstream message, in my opinion, went too far in the direction of aerobics and “a great core workout” and way too far from the real goal of this ancient science- to achieve a deeper relationship with our inner truth/source and to establish a clear heart-mind connection, or heart coherence (as Dr. Joe Dispenza puts it).

Being a yoga teacher in Boulder, CO it’s hard to say if the shift I am seeing towards a more conscious-focused, meditation-based practice is a trend to stay or if it is just a representation of the bubble that is Boulder.

I’m hoping that it’s here to stay and that this desire to connect with our deeper selves will only continue to permeate our culture. 

If you’d like to go deeper into your personal practice and are seeking guidance in your own life journey, feel free to click here to schedule a free 15 min call to take that next step towards real inner change.