Week #13 Ironman Training: Yoga, Yoga, Yoga

I am re-emerging from an 8 day yoga training with Live, Love Teach (LLT) where I participated in the most beautiful co-creation I’ve ever experienced in getting to the root of how yoga works.  The module was titled, Teaching Spirituality and Vinyasa with Confidence.  As I understand the core principles of LLT I knew this training would have nothing to do with providing me with a script of cool, yoga teacher things to say to my students.  I knew that I would be digging deep, getting lots of practice teaching, opportunities to try again and unconditional support from the group.  This is just how LLT works, the training is focused on a core belief that the most effective teaching comes from being authentic and loving, not from a place of pressure, expectation or fear. For me, those principles are in line with how I want to live my life and interact with others, everyone….even the assholes.  Through my training with LLT and my studies with Meditator Bob I’ve come to realize that every time I experience a person that my ego defines as an “asshole” I am simply seeing what is unhealed within me. This was a very difficult realization to come to as my ego furiously resisted this awakening but once I was able to see the reality I started to heal.

In my training this week I was able to articulate how this all began and it was a realization that yoga has taught me to pause before reacting. Nowhere else in my life have I been taught to do this and I now see that the ego is a separation device designed to destroy our interconnectedness.  A device that works to shape beliefs that I am special and you are not, I am right and you are wrong, I am better and you are worse.  It’s a tool that is always locked and loaded with reaction, defense and loveless words but the more I can recognize my choice to pause the less I pull the trigger.  This pause has allowed me to make new choices that are loving and have deepened my connection with others.  Its a much lighter way to live and I’ve noticed that it has changed every single relationship in my life for the better.  It is a constant effort but the effort is becoming easier, the pausing is becoming more natural and I am feeling more love in my life.  This love is the place from which I teach as I put my students in a place of pause where the opportunity to ignore the ego and make a new choice is present.

So yes, I missed 8 days of Ironman training in respect to swim, bike and run but I practiced vinyasa yoga multiple hours a day and fed a strength that will be crucial to every second of the 140.6 miles I will travel in July.

Jai!

Week #13 Recap