The Story Beneath The Surface

I’ve resumed instructing yoga as Step 1 of returning to my dream (to open Crawl Space Yoga boutique).  After a year-long absence, I made it my goal to get back to where I felt most like my purest self.  I led two private lessons last Saturday.  Free of charge as I polish my teaching skills.  What my students don’t know is the incredible, widespread pain I am dealing with on a chronic basis.  They don’t see this and I do not reveal it to them.

My first student’s lesson was choppy at best.  Note to self for future clients, no pets and no children allowed during lessons.  They are a huge distraction. I am completely incapable of dedicating the amount of attention I need to on my student when their children are tagging along for the ride. I love children, and animals…jut not when I am trying to impart extremely important details to maximize the benefits of a pose or move in/out of it safely.

My second student’s lesson was more fun for me than her!   Having generated a sufficient amount of discouragement from daily headaches, stiffness, chronic pain and burning sinuses along with a less-than-productive private lesson earlier that day, I was ready to just ‘get it over with’.   Completely anti-yogi, I am aware.  Once I got there, and dove in to my work, I was swept up in a glorious, emerald wave of rejuvenation and joy.  *this is the magic of yoga.

I wanted nothing more than to connect with my student and deliver her into an emerald wave also.  I wanted her for find that glory, that refreshment in a foamy, crisp afternoon wave.  I am always surprised at the variety of differences among body types.   Legs, for example.  Length.  Knees knocked.  Bow-legged. Pigeon-toed.  So many different propensities and all must be accommodated.  Can you swing your foot in between your hands?  Do you have to drop to your knees and carry one foot up at a time?

I have so many limitations in my body.  Working with beginners, I am reminded to be grateful that I am more advanced and capable then I give myself credit for.

Like my First Kiss

Last Saturday morning, despite the oppressive cage of fears and doubt, I showed up for my new, beginner yoga student ready & willing.  Our lesson ran almost two hours.  I reprimanded myself after the fact (as is my immediate instinct to almost any action I take) for the frequence of start-and-stop’s, start-and-stop’s. I forgive  myself.  She is hearing these Sanskrit terms and alignment instructions for the very first time.   I am imparting them almost as if for the very first time; given my lengthy absence from teaching.

One of the most interesting & challenging facets to instructing beginners is adapting instruction to accomodate my student’s particular needs, limitations and strengths.  It is as if I am unlocking a secret, the revelation that will help this person feel better inside her skin.   As if walking in the dark, or swimming through mud, there really is no way to know for sure what you’ll discover along the journey.

After our lesson, I felt a surge of joy I haven’t felt in months.  It felt like my first kiss. I was energized.  I was optimistic.   I was overcome with gratitude for the practice, for my mentors, for my own body, for my student’s willingness.  It all made sense in that quarter of a day called the afternoon.

The mysterious pain, stiffness, dizziness and tinnitus that plagues me continues its wrath, though I knuckle my way through it with a positive attitude.  It’s tough to push like this.  I’ve even taken on a second private student.  I stacked her lesson after my first on Saturday even though I know that my body is weak and limited, that I have but two days off to myself.  I choose to be of service.  I cling to that surge of energy and support I felt after last Saturday’s inaugrual lesson and I use that as my committment to serving these beginners so that they may be healed.

Yoga Saved Me Once, It’ll Save Me Again.

2011.  What a year.  I was fired in January 2011.  Lucked out by landing a new, full-time job two weeks later.  Only to get laid off in May 2011.  Lucked out by landing an even better, new, full-time job a month after the fact-which I still work at today.  Great group of people.  Good company.  I should be more grateful.

Lord knows I worked my tail off to secure employment.  My livelihood and my residency in Las Vegas depended on it.

2011.  Most of the year spent underneath the  false, nauseating illumination of fluorescent lighting and fiber ceiling tiles.    Yoga factored in to my initial termination last January. I was “caught” stretching for 10-15 minutes each morning in a back conference room and reprimanded for it.  Later, it cost me my job.  Ironic.

Today, I see new yoga studios sprouting up all over Las Vegas in the same commercial lots I’d researched for my own yoga studio in Las Vegas.  I wound up chickening out altogether due to a lack of financial support and a risky economy.    The dream is one of those things, ya know, like the invariable difficulty of heavy traffic , or how toddler tantrums erode your sanity….the dream is always there just nibbling away at my present moment; reminding me what I could be, should be, would be doing…

I became violently ill in late November 2011.  I missed a lot of work between November and December.  Is it any coincidence that I’d also stopped practicing yoga altogether somewhere around late August/early September?  I just quit doing it.  I excused myself because I was always SO exhausted from my job…not just tired; EXHAUSTED.

How one goes from being so close to the fire you get singed by the flame to stone cold freezer-burnt?   My whole body, my mind, my heart suffered in the absence of a yoga practice. And I got sick.  Really, very sick.

Today, I continue to endure chronic pain in my head, jaw, neck, shoulders and middle back.  Day after day, the pain reminds me I’m alive.  I resumed stretching, even resurrected an at-home yoga practice in an effort to curb the pain. It hardly makes a difference.

This year, 2012, I resolved to get back to teaching yoga in Las Vegas despite my limitations.  Despite the chronic pain all over my upper body. Despite the full-time work schedule confining me to a cubicle five days a week.  I am going to get back to yoga.  When my heart broke in January 2008, I enrolled in my instruction program.  Now that my heart is again broken, I return to the place where I felt beautiful.

Yoga has a tendency to do that to people; make them feel beautiful, I mean.  I am one of those women who simply can’t stand the sight or the sensation of her own form.  Putting it to use, however, in expressive and therapeutic ways transformed this disdain into an appreciation for my body.

I imagine I will always feel some degree of conflict between myself and my body especially with all this pain built up inside it.  But there is yoga, and the panel of idols who led me to it, showed me its potential, its roots, its possibility, its safety.

My first student is an acquaintance of mine here from Las Vegas.  We do not know each other well, and I suspect she’s already written me off as a flake for rescheduling our first private, yoga lesson.  But this journey we are taking, she and I, it’s an adventure for the both of us.  I, a novice instructor all over again and she, a hopeful, inexperienced yogi.    This Saturday is our first session together.

 

I will introduce sun salutations (Surya Namaskar), a selection of standing poses, a balance pose, and a handful of floor poses to cool down before Savasana.  I haven’t identified a guided meditation to use yet…as if some divine intervention will somehow bring me the exact message I need to impart upon this student I just wait until the moment strikes to pluck a spiritual morsel out of context for this new student.   I will let you know how it goes!  Welcome me back on the Yoga scene, Las Vegas!