November 21st 2017
Do no harm, take no shit~
It has been a while, but I am finally back with a new entry to my yoga diary. I should start out by mentioning that I have given up writing my journey on a week to week basis because, if you read my week 3 yoga diary you will see that a few things got changed and switched around so my scheduling is a bit out of whack. However, I am really determined to continue this series for myself to look back on when I become a yoga instructor.
So before I get into the past weekend, I want to discuss a little bit about where I am emotionally and spiritually. I have realized that no good thing comes without a few challenges. I think my main motto of the year is “the path to success is paved with uncomfortable risk”. I have never really viewed myself to be much of a risk taker but there is always room for some change.
Speaking of change, there has been a lot of it. A new space to practice, a new course to dive into, books to read, things to write and classes to take. I am excited to see what kind of growth this change will bring.
~~~
This past weekend has been a pretty relaxing one where I have learned quite a bit while also getting back into my body which I really needed. I haven’t been doing as much yoga in the past month due to a combination of being busy and being a tad apathetic to my practice for a number of reasons that I don’t find relevant anymore. I didn’t realize how much my body was missing yoga until I got really deep into my hips this weekend.
The major topics of the weekend were hips, non-attachment, and embodiment. It sounds like a really mixed bag of topics, but really they all go together quite nicely. The hips are the place in the body that we hold the most emotion and tension. Tight hips can be indicative of a lot of pent up stress in the body and releasing the tension in the hips could actually release a lot of emotion tension.
This has a lot to do with non-attachment. When we become attached to things, people, situations, circumstances, they get absorbed into our body creating discomfort and tightness. Attachment to things also leads to mental modifications or filters obstructing us from the truth. Holding onto attachment causes us to hold unnecessary sensations in the body.
Attachment is something we don’t want to embody, which brings me to the topic of embodiment and what I want to embody. Through my yoga teaching journey and my life, I want to embody ambition. I have always been the kind of person who enjoys creating projects for myself. I love thinking of creative ways to be productive and working hard to get things done. I try to embody ambition in small ways like remaining consistent with my blogging schedule and creating content on here that continues to challenge me both as a writer and as a person.
This embodied quality also translates over to my yoga teaching because I really want to find ways to make yoga a unique experience for people who take my classes. My desire to be ambitious makes me want to find a way to make my yoga class different than any I have taken before while still encompassing all the great things about yoga.
Aside from all of the more philosophical stuff discussed this weekend, we also did tons of yoga. On Friday, we had a really nice almost hour and a half class that was sort of a gentle yinyasa class that really got into the hips and shoulder. Saturday, we had to evaluate an instructor who was demoing for a teaching position at the studio. I really enjoyed the class and it was also my first time giving criticism which I hate doing, but also think I did quite well with.
Overall, I feel like this weekend was a nice one to get back into the swing of things and I am looking forward to learning more as I get closer and closer to being a teacher~
Jess~
JessofEarth 
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