So I’ve decided to start a blog, not only to help others and share any knowledge I pick up but also to record my journey as yoga instructor.
Where to begin? An autumn evening and a chat to my husband over a pint of Guinness, is never a bad place. One of those-where am I going? What am I doing? I can’t do this job forever if I am going to stay sane conversations I was so fond of. I’d recently been learning about minimalism and life clutter-both physical and emotional . I felt a little lost and needed to find what it was I was going to focus on and be passionate about. I’d always thought it would be amazing to be a yoga teacher but thought it was so unpractical and out of reach to dare voice aloud. I did. My husband couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it sooner-“you’ve practiced for years! You love it! Why not!?” So I did. The next day I enquired and booked up within the week. When I told friends and family, I got similar reactions “that’s so you, you’ll be perfect.” Turns out everybody else had a better idea of what I should do with my life than I did!
In June 2018 I qualified, at the wonderful Harmonise training academy. I chose them for their well-rounded course which I figured would give me a great foundation in teaching to specialise or study other aspects or paths of yoga in the future as and when I chose to. I wasn’t disappointed, I thoroughly enjoyed spending my weekends once a month at Harmonise.
I met and grew with my fellow classmates and we delved deeper into yoga than any of us had been before! I was so excited to begin learning things that could help my future students with their physical and emotional wellbeing. The possibility for me to really help to improve people’s lives through yoga-What a truly AMAZING gift to study. We Learnt about the philosophy of yoga-it’s various elements, texts, key figures, and the history behind it’s mentality and morals and how yoga is what we know it as today. It was so interesting and I found myself being more drawn to this amazing way of life, the more I learnt. We deepened our asana practice and studied poses in detail with our very experienced and lovely tutor Alexa-she made things light hearted and fun and I learnt from her, not only a wealth of yoga teaching knowledge but also to smile and enjoy yoga and have FUN with my practice! I also took exams in anatomy and physiology-I lost count of the hours of revision and mind maps I made. I definitely couldn’t have passed without the wisdom and exam prep from Clare! (Our other fabulous tutor!)
On the last day of the course we ended with a beautiful Yin class taught by the very talented Louise. We all sat round in a circle after the class taking it in turns to hold a green crystal (symbolic of the heart chakra) and talked about what we were feeling. Thankful, positive, joy, excited, humbled, grateful. Just some of the words I managed to blub with my throat tightening and eyes tearing up.
I’d done it. I’d taken my first step into teaching something I love, and I felt more alive than ever.