The day after my graduation from yoga-teacher training in May 2016, I jotted down some notes about lessons learned. The next day, I was admitted to the hospital with preeclampsia, and I remained there until I delivered my son on June 1, 2016. The notes fell to the wayside, but the lessons did not, and I wanted to share some of the ones with the most staying power here.
Graduation day with my teacher, May 2016.
If you think yoga is about handstands or stretching, you’re missing the best part. There’s nothing wrong with going to yoga to get a stretch or a workout or a yoga butt. But if you’ve gone to yoga for one of these reasons, you’ve probably noticed that you leave feeling a little bit more lighthearted and relaxed, or maybe even blissful. Part of the joy of getting serious about yoga is admitting that it was really never about the handstands or stretches, but has always been about connecting with the body, the breath and the wisest version of yourself. And when you go in with the intention of connecting with your highest power or wisest self? Man, do things get good!
There’s no such thing as “perfect” alignment of a pose. Our posture clinics were led by two 1,000-hour certified yoga teachers who have trained in numerous schools of yoga, including yoga therapeutics. This means they’ve trained with people who see the only expression of Warrior I as with a narrow stance, a sealed back heel, with the hips completely square. They’ve also trained with people who have hurt their hips after years of forcing their bodies into that position, because it didn’t serve their particular anatomy. The fact is, the poses are all pretty modern—created for Indian boys in the 1800s—and are not, as I’d imagined, written in stone next to the Ganges River. It was fascinating to learn how differently all of our bodies are built, and to try to build the “perfect” pose for our particular bodies—which in itself could be a lifelong journey.
I will spend the rest of my life trying to perfect my downward facing dog. When a friend of mine went through her own yoga-teacher training several years ago, I remember her saying that she was obsessed with working on her mountain pose. That’s the one in which you’re basically just standing up. I get what she meant now. You can spend hours trying to activate and then soften each muscle in your body to best express any pose. And even when you feel like you’ve got it all just right, you breathe, and it all changes, and you must activate it again. This is actually the best part—realizing that there is no such thing as being “balanced,” but only the never-ending act of balancing.
My fellow graduates.
We’re all hungry for authenticity and community, and we get there through vulnerability. We were all attracted to our teacher, Kim Beekman, because of the community she creates through her willingness to be vulnerable with her classes. During our training, we created the same sense of community for ourselves. I learned that yoga isn’t about learning physical skills, such as balancing or stretching—it is a stripping away of the things that we falsely believe define us, like our jobs, our clothes, our resumes and our bodies. And we begin to strip all of that stuff away by getting real with each other about our fears and our feelings of inadequacy and all the other feelings we think are unique to us. (They’re not).
Yoga teachers, I’d love to know: What’s the most important lesson you learned during your teacher-training?
Amy Reinink 