"You Leave It All On The Mat."

It's a small delegation going to teacher training this Fall, from Toronto. So far, only three of us. And there are at least six active Bikram studios open here, and another two about to open later this year. So hopefully this means there will be classes available for us to teach when we get back.

But that is not the point to this post...

Anyway, because there are just three of us going, we have met up in trio once. And two of us have met up numerous times to practice side-by-side on the weekends. It's nice to practice next to someone who is going to be on the mats with you for the nine weeks.

• There's the camaraderie.
• The sharing of dialogue-memorization tips.
• The dissection of what to pack in the suitcases.
• The gossip.
• The freaking out that it's next week.
• And the sweat.

"The sweat?"

Well, yes. Seems like those of us who are prepping for training sweat a lot more than the average person.

• We sweat so much that if we have to pee in the middle of class, by the end of class we no longer have to pee. It has seeped out through our pores and onto our towels.
• We sweat so much that when we move our hips back fifteen inches in stretching pose, we hear a "squish" from our soggy Shaktis against the drenched towel.
• We sweat so much that when we roll up our mats after class, a torrential downpour escapes out the sides of the roll and pierces the silence of the room.

But this is all a good thing. Sweating is what your body needs. And a good sweat is a sign of a valuable practice.

"(The bucket of sweat you left on the floor means) you leave it all on the mat," I said to my fellow trainee today. I expanded my theory for her though...

"When you have a good sweat, it means your body got out a ton of junk: Stress. Chemicals. Pain. Stuff you don't need. You just sweat it all out and left it on the mat."

She agreed.

When in doubt, sweat it out. Bikram yoga is therapy.

Practice Schedule.

So, again, I have 12 days till I leave. And while I have received conflicting advice from teachers on how much I should practice before I leave ("Take it easy! Don't kill yourself before you go. REST!" to "You should be going every day and doing some doubles right up until a few days before you leave."), I have decided that this will (likely) be my practice schedule for the next few weeks...

• This week: Practice every day, Monday through Sunday.
• Next week: Practice Tuesday (maybe)

Yep. I will go every day this week, and then maybe practice Tuesday next week. I am going to take it easy the final few days before I get on the plane. You may think I am crazy... But I just don't want to exhaust myself before I go. And I want to spend as much time with The Husband as possible.

I Am Packed!

More or less.

But I am pretty much ready to go in t-minus 12 days.

TWELVE DAYS!!!

I will be taking one big suitcase...

And one small carry-on...

I have just a few things to wash and throw in right before I leave. But everything is mostly in there. I will only use two sets of practice clothes for the next 12 days for any classes I go to here in Toronto. But the rest of my Bikram practice clothes have been washed and disinfected. As has my main practice mat.

I will just be using the Scooby Doo yoga mat here in Toronto for the next few weeks. I feel it sends a great message.

A Whole 194 "Standing Head to Knee" Poses "Lucky."

I am lucky. I will not try to deny it.

When I hinted in January of this year, at work, that I was thinking about going to teacher training this Fall, my boss mentioned that a leave of absence was a rare thing.

I was in the first month of my Bikram 101 challenge, and I was finding myself randomly pushing my hips forward (towards the mirror) while standing in line for coffee during the work day. I would hear bits of the dialogue echoing through my ears while researching things for clients. The idea of finally attending teacher training was becoming more and more difficult to evade.

So by late February I made a decision. NOT going to teacher training was not an option for me. I wanted to go. I had already put it off once. I was not going to do it again.

So I said to my boss, "I have decided to go to teacher training in the Fall. I hope you'll have me back when I am finished. But I completely understand if I have to look for a new job when I come back. Either way, I wanted to make sure I gave you enough notice."

And to my surprise, he was happy to have a discussion with me about taking the time off. But back then, it seemed like Fall training was a long ways off. Way off. In the distance.

It was a whole seven months away.

It was. And now, it's a mere 27 days till I hop on a flight.

TWENTY-SEVEN DAYS!

And you know what? I only have 18 working days left.

EIGHTEEN WORKING DAYS!!!

Panic is now starting to set into my brain. Why? I feel like I have so much to do before then. New business to pitch. Contracts to put together. Duties to delegate. Egos to manage so that my boss won't see how poorly I run my team while I gone by having to deal with them himself.

Here's to busting my ass like crazy over the next few weeks, before I go. Yes, I am letting the guilt of taking the time off get to me.

But, I will have a whole nine weeks to let it pass. I mean, my mind will be preoccupied with other things. Like the (at minimum) 194 Standing-Head-to-Knee poses I will be doing.

After that many, I better finally have a fucking supreme Standing-Head-to-Knee.

Getting Through The Standing Series Is The Toughest Part.

My mind, as you may know, has been all over the place these past few weeks. And the "monkey mind" seeps into my practice... And as a result, causes me to have a crap-tastic class.

I so mentally exhausted that every time a "party time" (aka "water break") comes in class, I carelessly grasp for my 40 ounce Klean Kanteen filled with cold relief. Which then causes me to have acid reflux throughout the class, as the water slushing around in my belly makes things difficult.

So in this afternoon's class, I made a concrete ("lampost, you have no knee") decision. I decided I was not going to take any water break until I got to the floor series. And you know what I discovered?

Like with learning the dialogue, it is best to just get through the Standing Series... And then things will be easier in the Floor Series.

I drank after Toe Stand, right before Savasana. And then again in Supta Vajrasana (Fixed Firm). Then right before Final Savasana. And I had the best class I've had since - I kid you not - I finished the Bikram 101 Challenge.

Not throwing water in me right before Standing Head to Knee made the pose much easier. I only fell out once on each side. My Standing Bow was AWESOME today. And the spine strengthening series was amazing. I stayed in every single time.

This gave me a great opportunity to get some serious form guidance from my teacher today... As she was able to accurately see what I was doing and how I could tweak things.

So from here on out... I am going to be much cleaner and efficient with water. I've given way too much up to my monkey mind and started to get sloppy.

Good Form. No Fidgeting.

I took the early morning class yesterday with one of my studio's directors.

Any of the teachers at my studio would be ideal for me to practice with before I go away. Every single one I have practiced with in the past few months knows I am going to teacher training next month. And they have all given me great feedback.

However, I am trying to make sure I take classes with the directors before I go because they are the ones who wrote my recommendation letter for me. I want them to be secure with the fact that they signed their name to paper to say I was "ready" for teacher training.

Plus, it's good to practice with them so that they will remember you are going to teacher training... And will hopefully be willing to give you classes to teach when you get back. (Fingers crossed!)

Anyway... Back to yesterday's early class...

Early morning classes are tough for me. I am naturally dehydrated. My body isn't warmed up yet, because I haven't been up all day walking around. Any water that I do drink for the first hour after I am up tastes like toothpaste. So I knew this, one of my first early morning classes in a long time, was going to be rough.

My endurance in the poses was crap. Complete crap. I fell out of Standing-Head-to-Knee and Standing Bow a dozen times each. And during Half Moon, I wasn't able to go nearly as deep as I normally can.

It was disappointing.

Till after class.

My director waited around for me to come out of the room. He said my focus in my practice is much improved from where it had been.

"You aren't fidgeting anymore," he said.

I am normally a fidgeter. I scratch. I wipe. I tug. I grimace and make funny faces. And before I go away to teacher training, the fidgeting is something that needed to stop.

I don't want to be called a "chicken shit" by Bikram for fidgeting.

I told the director that I felt I needed to build up my endurance before I go away. He said not to worry too much about that.

"You have good form. And you aren't fidgeting as much as you used to," he said.

So I am going to stress less about the fact that I am falling out of postures. There will be plenty of time practice staying in them, as Bikram allegedly likes to make us hold poses super-duper-extra long.

Here's The Plan!

Following up yesterday's post about having a shitty practice lately...

I was in class last evening, chatting with a teacher about training. I was telling her how I was trying to do another 30-day before training begins in six and a half weeks. She told me, though, to make sure I don't kill myself with my yoga practice right up to the start of training.

"Take a week or two off beforehand. The first two weeks of training are spent getting used to the energy and the room. You want to go in craving the yoga. Best way to do that is to take a break right before you go."

I said I didn't want to have a shitty practice when I get there, and that I wanted to have everything in good form.

"The first two weeks is a leveling for everyone. People are falling out left and right. You will be no different from anyone else when you get there."

This made me feel TONS better. I will take the week and a half before training off and just focus on my dialogue. I will finish my current 30-day, and then take a little break.

Shitty Practice Lately.

My practice has gone to total shit lately. Total shit.

I am doing my best to pull through each class. But my mind is being a total asshole to the rest of my body, and as a result, my practice has sucked the past few weeks. I can't seem to "concentrate and meditate." It's all emotional and mental stress. Totally in the mind. It's not my body. My body can execute the postures. But my mind is all over the place lately.

"What's going on in my head?" you may be wondering. Well, there's so much to take care of before I leave for San Diego for two months...

• Work: I am trying to hustle and confirm a significant promotion for myself before I leave. And in order to do this, I am doing a lot of work to get new business signed on and make sure my team is able to handle it while I am gone. They totally are. But I still stress about every single little thing. I have a hard time letting go and stopping the micro-managing. I have this, "If the business fails, it's my fault" mentality.
• Husband: The Husband has been nothing but wonderful about the whole "going away for two months" thing. But it still stresses me out... The guilt, that is. It's guilt that is brought on by myself. And so I am trying to spend as much time as possible with him before I leave... But then the work thing gets in the way. As does the yoga and the dialogue studying.
• The Yoga: I am forcing myself to get to class as much as possible, despite the shitty practices I have been having. And the dialogue study is taking some major focus and commitment on my part to actually get done.
• Redecorating. I am trying to get a room redecorated in my house before the end of August. My mind is scattered, despite having a half dozen things to do.

I leave for San Diego in less than seven weeks. It will be nice to finally get there, and just immerse myself in the yoga and the study. But until then, I still have all this to deal with... And it is definitely taking its toll on my practice.

Packing Test-Run.

I am a dork. I did a packing test-run this weekend.

Please don't think I spent my Friday night just packing for an adventure that doesn't even begin for another seven weeks. No... I was packing as a distraction.

See, I brought home a pile of work this weekend. And after I did a few bits and pieces of it, I decided I needed a break. So I went into my closet, put on "All About Eve" on my iPad... And began to clean my closet.

I got rid of a ton of things I don't wear. And while I was at it, I decided to do a test-run to see what all I could fit in my large lady-bug suitcase from Rome.

Yes... It all fit in there. And I still have some room to spare. But I may be taking a carry-on bag as well. The white binder contains my dialogue. And there are some books relevant to the yoga that I want to take as reference.

And of course, I can't go anywhere significant without my most favorite shoes ever... The Miss Dior Gladiators. They've been to Amsterdam, Brussels, Los Angeles, the Bahamas, Paris... And now San Diego.

I Wanted To Do Another 30-Day...

Really. I did. I wanted to do another 30-day challenge before I go to training in mid-September. And while there are a great number of days between now and then which would make a 30-day challenge possible, my schedule doesn't seem to want to accommodate it.

What's preventing me?

Well...

• Work. I have a shit-ton of things to take care of prior to leaving for two months. Work is being amazingly wonderful about me stepping away for two months. So I intend to make sure I have things in great shape before I leave.
• Husband. I really, truly don't want to leave him for two months. But I have to. And I am doing my best to make sure I spend time with him before I go. And this means taking a trip with him to visit friends in August, even though I don't have the time to do even that.

Those are pretty much the only things. Doesn't seem like much... But the work thing is really the biggest factor. With me gone, it could mean there are two months without any solid new business pitching going on. So any new business I can bring in before I go would be really super cool.

I am following a strict 5-day a week practice between now and the time I go. And I do intend to pull some doubles as well. The back-to-back kind.

Bikram Yoga & Social Networking.

Wow! It is hard to believe we only have 11 weeks till Fall Teacher Training begins.

INSANITY!!!

In order to start building a community before the training begins, a few of us have been developing some social networking schemes to get people talking and pumped up before we all hit San Diego.

Fellow trainee, Chrissy, has created a Facebook page for the training session. All are welcome to join! It would be great to see if anyone has questions that the group can answer... As well as get to know some faces and names beforehand.

Also, in the Spring of 2009 Training, Yogaballs created a Bikram Yoga Teacher Training hash tag for Twitter. It is #bktt. Whenever you have a question or want to reference Bikram Yoga Teacher Training in a tweet.

Let's get this community activated!!!

Bikram Yoga Teacher Training Tips.

I am fortunate to have paid well in advance of training beginning this Fall.

Many people who go to teacher training do not decide to go until about six weeks before it begins. And they don't issue you your copy of the dialogue until after you have been accepted and pay in full. So now that I have the dialogue, I am doing all I can to memorize as many of the great number of pages before I get on the plane to San Diego. And here are some of the ways I am doing it...

• Write down the poses by hand. Or you could type them, I guess. Either way, it helps me with remembering which phrases come after the other.
• Study in a group. Regular study sessions to help demo the poses and memorize the dialogue in groups helps. Some studios even start a study group for the students planning to attend training at some point in the future.
• Record myself reciting the poses. This has been really helpful. I play them back on my commute to work each morning, while at the gym and even while I am falling asleep. (Learning through osmosis!)

Anyone else got any other memorization techniques???

Accepted!!!

The first step in my wonderful journey to becoming a certified Bikram Yoga teacher... The application.

And it has now officially been accepted!

Yes, in a little less than THREE months I will be heading out to San Diego to spend nine weeks in "Bikram's Torture Chamber." YAY!

Long nights... Loud Bollywood films... Double classes... Forty-plus pages of dialogue to be memorized... Two months away from The Husband...

It will be insane. But it will fly by. And at the end, I will be able to help others do what I have begun to do: Heal my body and mind.

I can't wait. But come back to read about my journey. I will be posting as I prep for the training, as well as while I am there. Hopefully it will provide you some entertainment.