It's been good to be back home in NW PA--and back to work in the classroom. And because my daughter is herself back at school in Minnesota, I'm not doing skate shuttling. While I miss my daughter tons, I don't miss the driving so much. Nonetheless, I've taken on a new adventure that does require some driving. But that's just the first investment. I got some crazy idea over the summer that I was being called to take yoga--and train to be a yoga instructor. I have a few ideas, very particular ones at that, about what led me to come to this mid-life revelation (hey, if it's a mid-life move, call it what it is!). One is that (if you have read much of my blog at all) that I have really been loving yoga. The way I feel doing it (even the painful positions that I wonder when will end), the way I feel after doing it, and the way I feel (it turns out) teaching it, brings me peace.
So I will give a plug to Thrive Yoga in Rockville, MD, where I go one weekend a month for the 200-hour training. Yes, a teacher training in Pittsburgh would have made more sense, but there was something about this program that called to me. It does mean quite a drive once a month or so, but I do wear my seatbelt. Not only in the car, but on the yoga mat as well. For this yoga training has been a learning experience, the depth of which I could not imagine. It has been as much about healing as it has been about learning how to cue a class in downward facing dog (though it is that too, of course). I have learned a bunch of things about myself and ways to be in the world through this program. It's been a real blessing.
And now I have started teaching my own practice classes with willing (and forgiving) friends and colleagues. I encourage them when on the mat to unfasten their seat belt and dive in...
