Two weeks to go until the deadline for the teacher training course I applied to. Probably likely three weeks until I hear if I a) got on b) have to go for interview c) am not right for them. Argh. The nerves are starting to play a little bit. But there is literally nothing I can do, and it's not like not getting on it doesn't mean I won't become a yoga teacher! I veer between calm and worried. Roll on February. At least I'll know more then!
I've been busy with normal life stuff. Am into the eighth week at my new job, and so far it seems to be going really well. Everyone is lovely and positive and supportive, and my project is progressing well. It feels like a world away from last year, and everything feels under control and calm. Obviously as we get deeper into the project and timeframes draw closer that could change, but I'll do my best to keep myself levelled - there's no point in repeating old bad habits, especially with the multiple ways in which life has been changing.
I did a ton of yoga this weekend. First off, mysore with Sarah, which was great - I learnt a better way to come up out of supta konasana, involving protracting the back and tucking the head - I had been trying to come up fully straight. It made a difference. Last week I focused on my home practice and spent some time at home, working through the primary series. I feel like I've made some progress, but I still know that to really see a great improvement, I need to commit more to the home mysore practice. But it's not viable to do mysore every day at this point - some days my dodgy shoulder plays up, some nights I'm out...
A big highlight of the weekend was, lamely, tidying my bedroom this week (I am 13) which should help - things have got increasingly messy and that doesn't bode well for brain clarity. I'd cleared a shelf and created a little quiet space with candles and meaningful things, but the rest of the room needed doing.
I've been living with my parents for just over a year while I save to buy (I have faith it will eventually happen) and while in large part it's been fab (I love spending time with them, I know it's time I will remember happily) I do struggle with the lack of personal space. For instance, I normally practice in my sister's old bedroom, which is tiny and cluttered. When my parents were both out last week, I was able to practice in the living room, and ended up doing a 90 minute practice, which I partly put down to simply being able to create a space and atmosphere and not hear other people in the house.
I enjoyed two different yoga workshops this weekend. One was 'yoga for cyclists', led by my teacher Tammy at the YogaHub. This focused on hamstrings and hips primarily, and was an hour of quite intense asana followed by an hour of yin. I managed to make quite a lot of notes and there were some really interesting ideas in there - like deepening a kneeling lunge by placing a block under your foot. I will write it up later! After this, I ended up spending the evening at my best mate's house, eating Lebanese and chilling.
On Sunday, I went to a workshop hosted by Sarah, about shoulder stabilisation, led by Andy Gill. He, like all the other people Sarah brings into the studio, is a very nice, friendly, supportive man, and we spent three hours learning about how to improve stability through the shoulder - such an important thing in practice, and key for me, with my dicky shoulder and neck and back from the accident. He taught us about lifting up in ekkam (as in, the start of a sun salutation) and not 'pinning your shoulders to the back'. I will write this workshop up as well as it was super interesting and I think we could all benefit from it.
As ever, I did wish I had slightly longer arms, as I find touching the floor in a forward fold challenging (Andy asked us to put the weight on our hands, even if that meant coming forward, and then pull back on them, with the weight still in them, which I found immensely challenging). Sarah, being awesome, had prepared tea and even home baked - we enjoyed date and fig slices, welcome after focusing the brain so much! Thankfully this wasn't an asana class, though we practiced lots of twists and downward dogs etc, as every single muscle in my body ached from the four hours of yoga I'd done the day before.
This week for me will be about starting to strength build - I really need to do this in order to achieve a bunch of things including inversion opportunities - so I'll be at Body Pump tonight, and hopefully will make it to the gym later in the week too. And also getting in more practice with tougher postures at home. Fingers crossed!