Being Here

a great many changes have been swirling around in my life of late, but none more important than my beginning yoga teacher training. the first class was tonight, and how fortuitous that it should be today, which must be one of the most hectic, stressful, and retardedly harried days i can remember having in over a year. of course, it was never my day's intention, though it did seem to be mine.

oh, aren't i so INteresting?

the point, without fluff, is that i made my day what it was. even as it happened i could easily tell myself i was overreacting to situations and making things far more important and negative than they actually were. and as tired as i am, i know this experience will be more rewarding to me if i write it all down.

this training - i learned today - is not going to be easy. it is going to require more discipline that i would ever flatter myself with thinking i possessed. forget doing the poses - can anyone remember how long ago they made flashcards or an outline? well, good for you. i CAN'T. i don't think i did even when i knew how. ugh. ok, i'm getting off the...well, what the hell is the point?

ok, i think i remember. there were a lot of things discussed this evening, but more than anything in the reading or in the stories of our instructor's discovery of herself with the practice (and they were many and beautiful), i think i found the greatest lesson in something a student shared.

getting somewhere else is a direct result of being where you are now.

how simple and amazing! and not "now" like "this week", but NOW. THIS moment. and our teacher added inspirational bliss to pleasure by telling us that she as a teacher had never told a student something they didn't already know inherently. that you treat a student as you would yourself, because we are all the same; i am you, you are me. and that we DO know the answer to any question we seek to ask. and all of this training, all of the yogic practice, is to service the deepening of our relationship to those answers, to our own intuitive voices.

you already know what to do.

it was lost on me for a moment until i realized that that statement was why i was in that room in the first place.

then i tried not to fart and think about how hungry i was. but then, it was day 1.

namaste.