Last year, March 2014, I joined my first Instagram yoga challenge thanks to a blogger (Erin) I follow who was one of the hosts of the challenge #sweathappywithyoga along with Kim and Paige. Last year at this time, I began a new chapter in my life as I was unemployed, looking to move to Philadelphia (having never been there before) and wanting to join a yoga teacher training program.
I googled and researched for gyms and yoga studios and training programs, probably spending more time with that then the whole job searching thing, because #priorities. My googling led me to find The Yoga Garden in Narberth which also has a second studio in the city. It felt like fate as I moved in April 28, 2014 to my apartment and noticed a meeting on Friday May 2, 2014 about the yoga training program. I called the studio and told them I was coming to the meeting and showed up that Friday to a yoga studio I had never been to meeting my yoga teachers and a couple people that would become fellow yogi trainees. I wasn’t in the program just yet though as there was an application to fill out which I worked on for the month of May. The questions challenged my thinking and started to let me explore what made me decide to be a yoga teacher. I finished that at the end of May, at the time I accepted my job offer and the day I started my job on June 16, 2014, I got my acceptance letter to the yoga teacher training as well.
I was so excited not only for my job but also to have this opportunity to become a yoga teacher and to get to know myself on a deeper level.
So here we are in March 2015. This month to celebrate my 1 year of yoga challenges on Instagram, I have been re doing each of the poses from my #sweathappywithyoga challenge under #aliciainstayogaversary. Some poses it seems like I am worse at this year than last year, but what I have now that I didn’t last year is more knowledge about how a pose should be done, so I have been concentrating on that and let me tell you, some of these poses seem so much harder (because I am actually doing them correctly now…).
The pose I am most proud of is my crow pose. Can you believe that last year I could not even hold crow, but I was determined. I practiced and practiced that pose after I moved and had more space to practice and by summer I finally held it. It may have been one breath but it was more than a millisecond and now I can hold it and talk or take multiple breaths!! In fact I made crow my peak pose in my first yoga class I taught in my teacher training. I got complimented on how well I demonstrated the pose and showed how to do it using a block for help on height which I learned in a yoga class at my old gym.
Here are a few other photos of my progress or rather better alignment perhaps.
It is amazing to look back to see how much I have changed and grown over this past year, not only in yoga, but in life. The fact that I only have 2 weekends left of yoga teacher training is kind of crazy. I will be happy to have my weekends back come May, though at the same time I wonder what I will I do with all that free time?? I will also miss the awesome yogis and just learning so much about the body, alignment, yoga philosophy and more. What I am looking forward to though are hopefully some weekend trips this summer, lots of sunshine, walks after work, swimming in an outdoor pool and doing some yoga outdoors 🙂
Another event I am looking forward to in May is Yoga on the Steps. I participated last year and it was so much fun. Please help me reach my fundraising goal by going to my page to donate for Living Beyond Breast Cancer.
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