Thanking my teachers

I started my first day of yoga teacher training today. Leading up to it, I've been thinking about how lineage is important in yoga and how you thank your teachers and the teachers before them for bringing you this practice.

And so I have been thinking about my teachers.

Mel is my ashtanga teacher and I have been studying with her for nearly two years. Someone asked me today what it is about her, why I gush when talking about working with her. I think it's because I trust her implicitly. Her confidence and calmness in the practice rubs off on me and if she thinks I can do something, I start to believe I can. She's patient, and just the right amount of push. 

I can say, hand on heart, that I wouldn't be where I am today without her as my teacher. I don't think I would have even considered yoga teacher training an option or an idea.

There's also Ruth, who covers for Mel when she is off in Greece or Goa, and who is totally different and who pushes and cajoles in a totally different way. I like having the dichotomy of the two of them.

There's Robert, whose class I took at the gym down the street from us on Isabella in Toronto. There's Miss Irene, Miss Karen and Miss Judy, my dance teachers from long ago, who taught me about movement and discipline and trained my body in a way that I couldn't really comprehend then but understand so much better now.

And the countless teachers who I've had for a class or a week or a month who have made an impact on me. Even those who didn't, or whose class I didn't enjoy. All those moments with people who stood up to teach me something. Whether I learnt it or not.

I guess what I'm saying is thank you. 

When something difficult becomes easy

When I started doing mysore ashtanga in 2012 I couldn't bind my hands in marychasana B with my foot in lotus. After awhile I put my foot in lotus but didn't get into the bind. Then I started to do the bind with help from my teacher. And then I didn't need as much help to get into the bind. And then I started to only need help occassionally.

And somewhere along the way between then and now, my body learnt how to bind my hands in marychasana B with my foot in lotus. 

And it became a thing that I just did. Not something that was hard, or even remotely noticeable. I just breath through it now and hardly notice. But the other day, while my brain was thinking about the more difficult postures that were coming up (I know, bad lady, mind wandering) and how I sucked at them and how I'd probably never get any better at them and I'd never see the end of the primary series and I'd just have to make my piece with being rubbish at yoga, another thought popped into my head. My nose almost touched the ground in marychasana B and I remembered how I improved bit by bit, little by little, over time, to get to a place where I could bind marychasana B and what seemed like a miracle at the time was now not  a big deal.

It got me thinking about all the little things that you take for granted that were minor (and sometimes major) victories at the time, but when the glow of success wears off you push that moment to the back and you blind yourself with the next obstacle. And I lose sight of everything i've ever accomplished and only see the impossible and feel like a failure at EVERYTHING, not just the silly obstacle in front of me. 

I've been working on bhujipadasana for over a year now. I have definitely improved, but it's not elegant or efficient. And my teacher has me started on kursanasa, which is difficult and I can't quite get my shoulder beneath my thighs so I can't quite go all the way and and and and clearly I'm terrible at this and I'll never get it.

But if yoga over the past 18 months has taught me anything I think it is patience with myself. I still need to remind myself of that (often) but the lesson is there.  Noticing, and remembering the little victories, and remembering that they took time and dedication, and repetition, and that, ultimately, it didn't really matter, because no sooner had I conquered one mountain when I put my sights on the next, makes me a bit kinder to myself and a bit more patience.

Yoga is the art of making the impossible possible and the possible easy.