So, day five of VY Teacher Training.  There are 67 people in this group, and it's actually been exceptional getting to know the wide variety of people that have come here from all around the world.  Yogis aren't afraid to touch or be touched and, even when our stuff is out there and all over the map (or should I say mat) there is still a very supportive community helping you along in the river...and the proliferation of body workers doesn't hurt either. 

 So, after our first day off since we've arrived, we were treated to the gift of a late practice (8:30) and brunch followed by three more practices, training in the sutras (exegesis and chanting), asana concepts, practice observations and of course lots of questions- the fun never stops when you are a yogi, let me tell ya.  

Well, the interesting thing is that, for me, alot of contemplation of self-nurture - its absence, its presence, so on, so forth - has been rising up. I forgot to mention that the practices were, without exception, really great for me today--I learned alot about what works for me, what I can pull back on and not needing to work so hard at it.  And, most important, what arose was the realization that I push myself very hard and I don't often practice much forgiveness.  I'll make an allusion here to a January filled with unexpected and inaccurate intrusions that raised a raft of emotions even as I understood that bigger lessons and ideas were at work.  However, I'm fairly sure that that experience hadn't yet been fully integrated or digested...perhaps thus the call for self-nurture.  My savasana (corpse pose) has been full of images and visions of a yogini (female yogi) in a cave with whom I've interacted and she has, each time, directed me/given me what I need--nurture, discipline, safety, acceptance.  In fact, today, she swept me up like a small child, grew large and held me.  It was very vivid.  And in that dreaming/waking/cognitively aware state I simply knew that this path and this product - yoga - is never leaving me.  

I've always felt that the presence of the divine is something that we all carry within--it's not without, there's no need for intermediary action.  It's a true, bright core in all of us that doesn't leave--it's rather that we leave or forget it.  Somehow, I've never quite associated that to my yoga practice. In fact, although I meditate and practice yoga in my daily life as a walk off the mat, asana has often been the least interesting part to me.  The postures are interesting, and they make me feel better - more in my skin  if you will - however, I've never made the clear connection that it's all of a piece. I knew it intellectually, just not in my bones and soul.  Today the zen slap/clap happened.  Can't explain it more succinctly than that.  And can I tell you, my friends, it was a pretty sweet moment.  All of a piece, all in place, all true, all good.

As they say in Native culture, today is a good day to die. 

As I say in acharya speak, that's all she wrote.

Namaste. 

Today is day two of Viniyoga training. Up at 6 for yoga at 6:30. As we work, the class faces the windows to the East and we watch the sky change, lighten and the sun appear even as the sun appears in all of us. Our teacher, Mirka, is a wonder. Present, stern and yet very, very gentle. I am not a morning person, but I stay with it. It's only in Savasana that I drift and, as we're called back, do I think "wait, we just started". I realize that I must have gone deep, because it truly did feel as though I had just laid myself down. I have a few flashes - that it's not as hard as I think and yet very very hard in all different manner of ways. I realize that I'm in the right place, yet don't feel very 'sticky'--as if the info isn't quite managing to stick, just float around or near where I'm at. Fortunately, we're covering familiar material that over the course of years I've played with so it's for now reinforcement.

Off to morning session.  Shanti Om.