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!
