First Day of Yoga School

Our first evening of our 200 hour In-depth Yoga studies left me feeling bliss and joy. I was a little wiped out after having had a fever the day before. But, when all of your dreams are coming true, how can you complain?

We did a continuous om for three minutes. Then, we threw a tennis ball to cue who would speak as we went around and through our seated circle and answered the question, "How did you get here?" It was amazing how everyone's stories connected and interwove. Devina even said that if you took a little bit from everyone's stories you would have her. What an amazing group of people!

After a short tea and pee break, we came back and partnered up answering the question, "What is Yoga?" Then we partnered with the person to the other side of us to answer the question again and continue the discussion. What my partners and I realized is that yoga is God. If yoga is union and union is love and if God is love... then yoga is God. Yoga is breath, is movement, is balance and harmony. Yoga is a path of "deep inquiry." We read the Cloud Nine manual's section on "What is Yoga?" Everyone discussed passages, sentences, words, and phrases that called out to them. Gorgeous conversation!

Then, it was down to business. We went through the manual backwards and went through the requirements and policies of the Cloud Nine teacher training. It was fun going backwards... albeit a little confusing for some.

We concluded the evening with a game of pass the squeeze.  You hold hands in a circle and if you feel a squeeze in your left hand, you squeeze your right and if the person to the right of you squeezes your hand, then you squeeze the hand of the person to the left.

This is my first blog ever. I am more of a journal and pen sort of gal. But, there is a "blog set up" on my website template that I have always wanted to set up. So here it is...

Tonight I start our third round of Cloud Nine Teacher Trainings with +Arezo Tehranirad. I am really looking forward to this training because we are at our new location at Free Spirit Yoga in Long Beach.  I plan to blog after each meeting to record some of the activities we tried. I want to have a more interactive training with a lot of games and memory exercises. I hope to move away from reading the manual in class and move toward discussing what was read at home. This depends on the students' motivation to do their personal studies. I also want to have a playful environment that makes the time fly by and information really stick. My goal is to help people become the best yoga teachers that they can be.