Break On Through

Things are kicking into high gear in Acapulco! Energy levels are soaring and you can feel the concentration, nerves and determination that is present. We broke into our groups and began posture clinics this week and it is already intense. Everywhere you look, people are huddled in small groups praciticing their dialog. People are reciting all hours of the night, and getting up as early as 5 to study. ... MY ADVICE FOR ANYONE GOING TO TRAINING: Learn as much as you can before you come!!! I am so fortunate to have come from a studio that prepared me, so I haven't been too stressed out yet. Someone said before I went that every minute you spend studying before training is equal to an hours sleep at training, at the time I didn't really buy it, I just thought, okay okay- i'll study more. But now, I totally get it, and understand.

So far, all the work I did before has really paid off and my posture clinics have gone well. It's interesting becasue they always tell us say that we're "nervous" because really what is being nervous? it's just another emotion and the feelings associated with it are just the feelings of excess energy. All of the staff has been telling us to acknowledge that energy, and channel it into whatever we're doing. Sounds corny.. but i have really been trying to do that and it has been paying off. Yesterday, my delivery went really well, i was feeling super confident but when I came back ot my room to practice more, I got horrible anxious. I started messing up postures that I know and I admit I got a little panicky. But Today I just breathed. before I even stood up to go, I breathed, gave myself a little pep talk, told myself that I KNOW THIS. THIS IS WHAT I WANT TO DO and it went great.

Classes on the other hand, have not been quite so smooth sailing... The first two days were kind of a breeze, and I think everyone was feeling a little over confident. Then posture clinic came along, and our legs were dead from getting stuck demonstrating Awkward Pose over and over again... Then we had the surprise pleasure of having Craig teach. wow... that was ridiculous. During posture clinic I had honestly been thinking, thank god today is not saturday because there's no way I could handle his 2 Minute Awkards... then sure enough he caem strolling, well strutting onto the podium and a sick feeling of dread and panic went through the entire yoga room. He kicked our asses. Seriously, the guy in front of me was curled up in a ball dry heaving onto his mat during the floor series, which then caused me to start convulsing, and thank god I had Erica by my side. She just kept whispering "breathe! breathe!" and I kept it in. (she later confessed, she was frantic to calm me down because she knew that if I lost it, she would too and it would be a whole wave of people puking in the yoga room.) ew.

oh- the other exciting news: we got our rooms moved! kind of sad because I really enjoyed the people on my floor, we had a nice little internet hallway hangout group, and I miss them already. BUt I gotta admit the view over here is beautiful! I feel badly Erica had such a bad alergy to the mold in our room.. ick but the move was kind of a score. This morning we enjoyed a cup of tea on the balcony and watched the ocean before practice. Really... we had spotted a shark, which was a little scary, and we were a little scared there was going to be a jaws re=enactment becasue there was a surfer not too far away, but apparently the sharks are friendly here. (Note to self: ocean is for looking at, pool is for playing in.. here at least)

but anyways, it made me realize how acapulco is the perfec tplace for bikram's teacher training. He always talks about how his series, his yoga is supposed to 100% effort, and then 100% relaxation. Well, technically it feels like 190% effort sometimes, but I'll take the 100% relaxation when I can get it That's what it's like here. There's not distractions here, we don't have to drive anywhere, there's aren't that many people here besides ourselves. It's kind of like our own private litte Ashram. Okay, I need to take a shower before more posture clinic, but till then, NAMASTE!