I finally started my yoga teacher training! It's a bit surreal. This has been something that I’ve wanted to do for many years. I think the first time that it crossed my mind may have been 2011. That’s a long time to come up with reasons not to do something that your heart is calling you to do. There were so many stories that I told myself. I’m not yet fit enough. I’m in too much pain to even think about something like that. I’m not yogic enough (if there is even such a thing). Seriously, my ego had so many reasons to hold me back from living my best life!
As you may know from one of my previous posts, I attended a yoga retreat in Costa Rica in May of last year. It’s hard to believe that it was so long ago because it was such an influential experience in my journey towards healing and personal growth that the feeling of having actually taken that leap still lingers in my soul. At that time, I was already dreaming of doing teacher training but I felt that if I could practice for a week and deepen my practice, then that could set the foundation to build from there. Which it did for a little while
Progress was not linear though, and it hardly ever is. As you work to heal part of your past and previous trauma, sometimes other traumatic events will surface and start to take over. I found myself slipping again from the foundational habits that I knew could make me feel so good and so balanced but that took planning and action on my part. I got lazy and complacent for a little while. I was numbing the painful memories and emotions and feelings of exhaustion from lack of sleep with the odd glass of wine (or three) and salty snacks. I fell into control mode again. Trying to perfect everything. Not to say that I was perfect but that I wanted to be (and I wanted everything outside of me to be perfect as well). I was angry with myself as I put on extra pounds and the pain in my body increased. I found a number of good reasons why this wasn't my fault. On the tough days, I would gravitate towards foods and medications to ease the emotional and physical pain.
I then started to worry that this was what my future was going to be like. I was worried that I was going to be defeated. I longed for the days when I was fit and full of life. It was at least 15 years ago now when I really felt like my physical body was in good shape. I played squash. Before that, in high school, I was a cheerleader. I loved being able to freely move my body and not feel burdened by it. All of my attempts to “sort my shit out” and just eat better and move more… to starve if I had to like my doctor suggested, had not worked. In fact, the pressure that I was putting on myself was having the opposite effect.
On a camping trip north of Toronto to visit friends from my Borden days, one of my closest friends shared with me an inspirational video of a veteran who could barely walk and then transformed his health with yoga.
You can watch the video here:
As a veteran, who was now at the point of barely being able to stand long enough to stir the Thanksgiving gravy and hated each and every photo that was taken of me, this story resonated with me. I started to wonder: How bad is it going to get? Is there something that I can do about it? Are my meds and my pain really going to stop me from living the rest of my life?
I decided right then and there to sign up for my teacher training. I looked at the schedule for training at my local studio, Hamsa Yoga and made a financial plan which would allow me to pay the tuition and registered myself on the 200 hr YTT. With that first decision made, I took another step and signed up for weight watchers so that I could monitor if I really was taking in the calories to gain or whether it really was that my meds were holding me back. You can guess what I discovered. After a small loss of about 5 pounds, I was finding it very tough to keep going. I quickly discovered that I wasn’t eating because it really tasted that good or because I was hungry. I was NOT eating all day because my mind was going a mile a minute and then eating foods that were comforting and grounding at night. My relationship with food had replaced my relationship with other ways that I often used to get ground under my feet (striving, perfecting, controlling, anger or even healthy ways like exercise and fun). Groundlessness and anxiety are something that we can talk about in more detail later. The point is that I took a look at why I was eating what I was eating and had to face those emotions before real progress could take place. Otherwise, I could lose as much as I wanted but it would just come back because the itch that I feel to drown my emotions in wine and chips is strong!
I’m two and a half months into this journey and the discoveries that I have made on the mat have changed my relationship with both myself and others off the mat. I’ve made a ton of progress in my strength both physically and emotionally and look forward to seeing what else this process can teach me to then be able to share with others. Yoga has truly had a profound effect on my healing and wellness in ways that I'm not even sure I'll be able to articulate. For now, you'll have to take my word for it and try it out for yourself.
If this story has resonated with you, please feel free to dig into some of my other posts and share them with your friends. It is my sincere hope that this will become a place to share ideas that help us find our serenity!
Until next time,
Namaste
xo Kat
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