Day 2

Starts today. Yesterday was GOOD. I was not sure what I would be asked to do or if I could handle it. The morning chanting was WONDERFUL. The intensive was challenging, and I was really dragging by the end of it, but it was okay. My abs already look different . . . no joke. She got teacher trainees to shout out the instructions to most of the ab and shoulder work while we were doing it, which was difficult. How do you follow your own direction of holding breath and reaching with your elbows and extending a leg when you're yelling it AND trying to remember how to coordinate which of your legs you are straightening?

One thing became clear explicitly and implicitly in the afternoon: this course is not about trying to do anything perfectly. I've never met a better perfectionism-buster than Ana so far. I am really, really surprised and really proud of myself for surviving the afternoon exercises -- and with relative ease, as well. She threw us immediately into teaching one another using touch, then strictly non-verbal visual cues, then strictly verbal cues. She says, "teach a pose" but I don't feel like I ever KNOW a pose to teach. Being put on the spot, performing something I haven't digested how to perform is a recipe for a panic attack for me, but I floated through it. I think the intensives are a good tonic for my nerves, and I also think that I somehow managed to own my inexperience and use it to my advantage psychologically. Broadly speaking, I am inexperienced with yoga, and whatever way you put it, I've never taught it. So I managed to agree with myself that I was going to suck and be okay with it, and that's the whole point, for her. Ana keeps repeating to us that we're not going to get it perfect, we just won't, so just do it.

I was nervous that Ana, and her intensity, would be hard on me, but so far I'm okay. I've been explicitly warned that crazy emotional shit is going to bust up all over, though, so I guess I should be prepared to have that panic attack somewhere along the lines anyway.

I didn't get enough sleep last night, only 6.5 hours, and I'm feeling it today, and I look it. We now have nightly reading, and I needed an hour or so of decompressing and talking through the day before my mind would quiet down to concentrate again. Gonna need some extra spiritual strength to get me through the intensive, for sure.

Love,
MM