Yoga Teacher Training Weekend Two

Our second weekend of yoga teacher training kicked off with a 90 minute astanga practice. This was my first astanga (aka ashtanga, apparently that's the Americanized spelling of it, as that's how it's pronounced) and I was really excited to dive in.



Before heading to class I had about six seconds to come home and change, and I quickly checked the mail in hopes that my new malas had arrived. My last set broke on Valentine's Day and I've been without. Yay for me, they had arrived!



All the malas belong to me!

Astanga was fun and completely different from what I'm used to. I'm incredibly intrigued by the practice and hope my studio starts to offer more classes to get more of a feel for it!

Friday night we spent a lot of time breaking down poses. In fact, we did that the bulk of the weekend. Working on cues, being succinct with those cues, modifications, deciphering the benefits of each pose, learning assists, and sequencing. My.Brain.Is.Full.

Saturday morning we started with a highly anticipated inversion class. I'm super intrigued and terrified of inversions so I was excited to learn more from a master of inversions!



The class was open to all, and we packed the room FULL! Please enjoy this horrendous photo of me. :/

Saturday was more of the same pose breakdown, as was Sunday morning. Sunday afternoon we broke up into groups to practice our memorized Surya Namaskara A & B. We were told to memorize the counting in sanskrit, the breaths and the poses. I was thrown for a bit of a loop when it came time to practice and the studio owner wasn't concerned with the sanskrit counting but was with the sanskrit poses. Cue minor panic attack. Luckily I picked it up pretty quickly because I had studied the other stuff so much the night before (thanks Kyle for being my yoga student!).

This weekend marked the 2nd of seven being complete. Now that we have 6 days and 37 hours of training under our belts, I need to focus on the additional requirements of the certification process: 30 hours of yoga practice by approved instructors, 10 hours of yoga observation by approved instructors and another 10 hours of yoga assisting with the approved instructors. If anyone needs to find me the next few months, I'll give you one hint as to where you can find me...... (I think it was a good idea to put running on the back burner this spring, right??).