Yes, I am highly aware it's been a while since I posted. While I've been keeping my Instagram up-to-date, I've been transitioning between two jobs (the one I've been doing for the last couple of months in Shoreditch and the one I started this week closer to home) and by the time I get home in the evenings, I'm just completely exhausted and not ready to do anything that requires thinking. Additionally, my weekends have been intensely busy - a combination of yoga (my three Saturday classes), seeing friends, family stuff and rehearsals and performances. Excuses, excuses.
My new job, however, is local, and as such I'm going to be getting home earlier, and because there's not very much to do around here (it's a small village I can get to on the bus, as opposed to Shoreditch, and there's literally a Costa and a Sainsburys as opposed to all the amazing food options central London has to offer :'(), I can go to the Costa at lunchtime and get on my laptop. I'm hoping that will enable me to focus back in on the blog, as well as providing extra time for me to study when I do start training.
So what's new? Well:
I'm on the verge of submitting my yoga teacher training application. I've filled it in and all that remains is the references. I've sent a request to one of my teachers, and am waiting for my mate to give me the personal one (which has to be from someone who practices with you)
I completely zoned out in the yoga nidra section of my yin workshop/class last Friday. I literally have no recollection of what might have happened in-between the countdown and our teacher Caroline telling us to come back into ourselves. I told her and she was like 'yessss I saw, I was watching you, FINALLY' (lol). It was pretty awesome, especially considering I was once again tired, cold and hungry...
I've been doing a lot of reading about the yamas and niyamas post Dana Falsetti's workshops - Sarah told me to stop worrying about learning the names of all the poses and start learning about the philosophy - and she's completely right. It's really helped with understanding why we practice, and how much more there is around the physical practice
Colleagues at new job have asked me to start leading a yoga class in the new year. Bit nervous as I wouldn't normally say yes due to... er, not being a teacher (!) but I think it could be good so long as expectations are firmly set out
I'm in the middle of a yoga nidra online foundation course run by Uma Dinsmore-Tuli. I'm finding it hard to find the time to do yoga nidra at home overall, so that's something I clearly really need to work on over Christmas
I went to some very interesting David Swenson workshops on the primary and second series and on balance, which I'll write up soon (promise, I have a backlog to post about!)
I've learnt sun salutations and the standing sequence off by heart (although I still doubt myself and get a bit mixed up at times). I'm now working on the seated sequence. Sarah wouldn't give me a piece of paper when I got thoroughly stuck yesterday, saying it was better to learn it (and to be fair, I think I wasn't too far off!).
I have failed at going to Tammy's classes the last few weeks, purely because life has been too busy. That weird pre-Christmas thing, along with the times I can go to her classes being too limited. I'll be going back as soon as I can!
Lots going on! For now, I leave you with a lesson I learned yesterday: don't sit right by the radiator during mysore, it may help your muscles but you will end up with a stinking dehydration headache the whole of the next day...