As part of my yoga teacher training I am asked to keep a yoga journal. This involves writing down my experiences and thoughts about every yoga class I attend while in training. I’m encouraged to seek out as many different studios and styles of yoga as possible, making notes all the way. From this, my own unique path with naturally be shaped. Taking pieces from one class, leaving sections from others.

It’s like life. It’s like blogging. It’s like anything.

I haven’t started this journaling recording process yet, and I am toying with the idea of starting a separate yoga journal blog. Maybe I won’t make it separate blog and I’ll just log some random thoughts here… I don’t know yet.

It’s funny because I am at this point in my life where I feel that I am finally opening up more and more to being fully who I am in an integrated way and not compartmentalizing my life into little boxes of work/school/spirit/advocacy/family. I am working to mesh these selves. I am doing this meshing of selves thing cautiously, being mindful of boundaries. All in all, this process is having a trans-formative effect on me. It is forcing me to be more brutally honest with myself and others in surprising ways that are both difficult, and rewarding.

I think of this concept of the internal locus of control, and how really we do have so much power to craft our own lives, and the environments we find ourselves in. This is moving me forward. This knowing and believing. This way of doing life differently.

So for today, I want to share a few notes I’ve placed in my mind of moments that were particularly impacting on me in recent yoga classes. I consider it a sort of precursor to the eventual “yoga journal” I will write (in what way this eventual “yoga journal” will manifest I still don’t know, but regardless, here we go…)

Yoga Thought One:

Recently in a hot yoga class, the teacher was really persistent on reminding the class to do the ujjayi breathing. He explained that most people in Toronto aren’t doing yoga because they aren’t breathing in this way; Instead, they are doing some sort of bizarre gymnastics. This made me giggle. But anyway, for the duration of the whole class there was this incredible humming sound from our breath- the room seemed to expand and contract and was synthesized with our audible rhythmic breathing and perspiring bodies. The teacher spoke above the sound of the humming breathing room. He told us that some people believe the vibratory sound of our collective ujjayi breath has ancestral resonance of weeping yogis of generations past.

I loved that.

During shavasana (a meditation pose where you lie like a corpse) at the end of that class, the teacher was reading a poem to us. I started to cry. Normally I would shove these tears away. Force them gone. Consider them evidence I was crazy. I’d start to think about Borat or something silly to shift my thought pattern. I am not doing that anymore. I do not need to fear emotions, and I am learning that with tears of deep intensity of emotion comes a depth of living a fully human experience that is significantly more wonderful than thoughts of Borat ever could be. (And Borat is damn funny.)

Tears streamed down my face it it was amazing and fabulous and cleansing. I left that yoga class like I was floating on clouds.

Yoga Thought Two:

Recently during a yoga class the teacher said, “How you are on the mat is how you are in life.” That sentences transformed my practice and me for several reasons. I am skilled on the mat. I tackle difficult poses. I work hard on the mat. Very hard. However, I can’t seem to practice yoga unless I am in a class, or in a group. I have very hard time practicing yoga alone or alongside with DVDs. In my life I’m the same way I think, consistently searching out wards for motivation and inspiration. Again, I think this is related to my struggle with the notion of an internal vs external locus of control.

Also, I am very patient with myself in yoga, a trait that I do not yet have mastery over in my life off the mat. This realization empowers me. If I can have patience on the mat, I can take that skill/strength and use it in other instances of my life. When I am practicing poses that require great patience now, like Natarajasana or Pincha Mayurasana, I notice how it feels. I notice the kindness I have for myself, and the patience I have for myself. I pay attention carefully to what it feels like. In doing this, I am cultivating a way to transport this patience to other aspects of my life, most specifically, to mothering my two boys.

Yoga Thought Three: Feel the echo.

Yoga Thought Four: Ask yourself, how easy could this be?