Two weeks in

Saturday, 10/15/11 - It's been two weeks since I started teacher training.  Yesterday was a day of successes and failures, at least that is how I felt that day.  Every day in yoga is different.  One day you are strong and balanced, and the next day, not so much.  Physically, my practice was awesome.  I felt good and strong.  I noticed improvement in a number of postures both in strength and control.  I even had a few firsts, taken some postures to a new level I had not been able to do before and even doing some new ones I had never been able to master.  I was so excited! 

And then, failure.  It was my turn to teach the first half of our series to the class.  I was excited, and a bit nervous.  I had not practiced as much as I had wanted to, but nevertheless felt ready enough.  I had visions of it going smoothly, knew what I wanted to say, the tone I wanted to set and how I wanted to start.  I left the room to come in fresh, mimicking entry into a real class setting.  When I reached for the door to enter, I found it....locked. I tried several times and could not get the door to open; my concentration broke. The door is never locked!  I had to knock and have someone let me in.  This unerved me bit, but still I started off strong.   I brought everyone's attention inward, read a couple sentences from the book I am reading, Bringing Yoga to Life by Donna Farhi, and began.  The first section went smoothly - yes!  In the second, I began to get nervous.  I lost my train of thought and the words I wanted to say.  Somehow, I managed to get through the second part without anyone noticing.  At least I don't think anyone noticed!  In the third part, I was quieter than I had planned to be, rushed through some postures, and continued to get more nervous.  Then I completely fell apart, forgetting the order of postures, confusing everyone else, and myself.  I wanted to just start over.  Libby, our instructor, jumped in at the end to start teaching us the next series to continue the flow, if there was a flow at this point.  Training continued, but I was upset with myself the rest of the day.  I vowed to practice more, schedule my practice time, and free up my schedule for the next couple of weeks.  Unfortunately, the next four days were completely packed with work, doctor appointments, kids activities and more.  Somehow, it would work out.  As much as I have going on, and my teenager being a teenager, I should be pretty stressed out about now.  Deep breath.....thank goodness I am doing a lot of yoga.