YTT Weekend Three Reflection
At this point, I'm a third of the way through the training program. Last week, I went to a yoga class, and before the class started, I thought, "In six months, I could be doing this." I could be sharing my love of yoga with a community that I love. Grateful. Grateful. Grateful.
This is not to say that there have not been challenges. During the three months of the program COVID has changed. At the start of the program, we learned and practice and discussed yoga philosophy without masks. However, since the Delta surge in our community, we have had to return to masks. There is so much fear and partisanship and confusion in the country at large and our community- a chance to shut out the noise and drop into the here and now. Our training weekends are respite from the constant news stream, and what we have been diving into has helped me to deal with the news without getting weighed down by it.
In The Yoga Sutras, Putanjali discusses the idea of "disregard for the wicked." Our teacher translated this as meaning "don't let them kill your vibe." While this may seem simple, it's actually been incredibly helpful to me. One of my flaws is that I like to get involved in drama. I love to insert myself in someone else's issues. For someone who has a hard time with any sort of confrontation, I love to poke around in other people's business, but I have been working on it and The Yoga Sutras has helped. For example, in a Facebook group that I'm in, there have been a few people remarking that students should go back to virtual school. Anxiety rises in my chest when I see people agitating for virtual school. It was so hard on my family when my son did virtual school last year. There are numerous studies showing how detrimental virtual school was for kids last year. I wanted to respond to these people and tell them all the ways they were misguided. But, I took a step back and decided that l don't need to have this conflict. While the parents on Facebook were certainly not wicked, they were misguided in my view, and instead of getting involved in a conflict, I could close the laptop or click out of the app and get on with my life. I didn't have to let them kill my vibe.
Yoga and meditation are powerful practices. It's powerful to realize just how much our breath can help us to stay regulated and steady. As we approach our fourth training weekend, I feel such a sense of appreciation for this practice. It has kept me grounded during a time when it would have been very easy for me to drift away into the ether. But, here I am. Feet on the ground and ready for another weekend to drop into the here and now. One step closer to sharing my love of yoga with a community I love.