Hello, internet.

In one week to the day I set out to Seattle to do the amazing Ana Forrest's 200-hour yoga teacher training. This blog is about sharing that journey with YOU.

I learned about Ana Forrest only this summer. I began the summer with a 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat, in Merrit, BC, and the intention of making it a summer of spiritual growth. I have found that summer is a fruitful time to dedicate to a personal intention, probably partly because I've been a student for so long that my rest-of-the-year is always swamped, and my summers correspondingly empty -- but I think also that summer is in and of itself a season with an obvious beginning and end, and abundant energy, in which experiences can be felt perhaps more concretely over time than at other times of year. I expected that after the retreat I would find a job slinging coffee and spend a lot of time in sitting meditation. Instead, the recession hit, and I found Unity Yoga. Though Vancouver is full of wonderful studios, each with their own best features, I haven't found anywhere that more effectively fosters community among its practitioners and teachers than Unity. Practicing asana with others is an emotionally, spiritually, and physically intimate act, and every time I leave a class at Unity, I feel like I know and love the people I have just practiced with in a deeper and more special way than I have felt anywhere else. Especially since there is always tea to share while chatting (and embracing) in the tea room after. Some of the most important and influential friendships in my life right now have started there.

Once I had resigned myself to funemployment and dedicated myself to taking every one of Reno's classes I could, our mutual friend and One Love yogi Joe invited me to come share a personal practice, along with, Reno, Charlie, and Andria and Tyler, (who cannot be captured by a mere web page, and must be experienced in real life only). It was a style I'd never heard of: Forrest. Soon we were charging into a 40-day sunrise sadhana, and I experienced any and all of unreal blissed-outedness, exhaustion, superhuman strength (or it felt like it anyway), surprising leaps and bounds in the development of my practice, injury when I got sloppy with my Ashtanga, always-educational confrontations with ego, and a lot of emotional turmoil. Summer of spiritual growth, indeed. Charlie signed up for Ana's October training in Denver, and then I heard about the Seattle training.

A little seed of an idea kept popping up, but I didn't feel physically ready, or like I had enough yoga street cred, you could call it, to teach; I expected to be finished school and back in my hometown by March, where Seattle would not be a feasible distance away. I also, still funemployed, didn't think I'd be able to afford it. I asked Shakti to let me know when registration opened, and I watched the date come and go. I went back to school, Charlie went to training, Joe moved all over the world, Reno moved to Whistler (but then he came back, lucky for me!), Andria went traveling. I didn't finish my thesis. It took until the end of January for me to answer the nag at the back of my head and make a coffee date with Charlie to talk about how his training was, but one day things fell into place. We had coffee, I asked about training, and when I said "I ask because I was thinking about taking the March training . . ." Charlie said something that can be roughly paraphrased as, "YES! I'M SO EXCITED! DO IT! HOW CAN I MAKE IT HAPPEN! WHAT DO YOU NEED TO KNOW! ASK ME ANYTHING! I'LL DRIVE YOU THERE! DO YOU NEED MONEY? HERE'S FIVE BUCKS!" He said as soon as the words left my mouth he could see it unfolding in front of him -- most importantly, he gave me his sincere vote of assurance that, yes, I could do it. It was a weird day. A lot of things that has been out of focus sharpened up quick. Within ten days I had applied, registered, paid, informed my thesis advisor that I was going to finish by March, found a second reader, and written a draft. My life came into focus, and I found focus. I'm still working on the paper, and I might not be able to defend before I leave, but here I am, a week from training, and my second draft nearly done. In the spirit of focus... I'm going to get back to it, justifying this blog entry as a good way of getting today's writing flow going and pumping up my motivation, and hand it in tomorrow. This is the beginning!

XO
MM