Day 2 thoughts...

I didn't want to write "surviving Day 2" because it doesn't quite convey the sentiment I am looking for. "Experienced" is maybe more like it. Day 1 was very intense and when I got home I was trashed. Day 2 was less intense, shorter, and when I got home I still felt fine. I think some of it has to do with getting used to sitting on the floor for a longer time than I am used to.

So on Day 2 we had one new person join us who was absent the day before so Michelle used that as a good excuse to review everything and help teacher the new person what we had learned. I like that in teaching, used to do it myself in my Science classroom when I taught Middle School.

We also discussed an excellent article called "Yoga as Self-Transformation" from an old Yoga Journal (May/June 1980).  The author, Joel Kramer, had several important points to make about the process of yoga, dealing with the physical techniques, energy flows, and some of the stuff our minds throw at us as we progress in yoga. He refocused us on the idea of "Yoga, at its core, is looking within to understand the timeless question, 'Who am I?'"

A couple of points I really liked from the article:
"...yoga is a process that involves confronting your limits and transcending them."
"The essence of yoga is not attainments, but how awarely you work with your limits -- wherever and whatever they may be."
"So much of what limits our yoga practice is not in the body itself, but rather mental attitudes and habits."

Then we continued on our values exercise, which I want to write of more later. After that we listened to a Dharma talk by Jack Kornfield on who we really are, what identifies us... a lot of meat in this talk. I think the key point for me was towards the end: "What happens to us when we are who we truly are?"

Finally we reviewed the weekend with another teacher, Setheyne. One of our assignments from her was to take something we learned or talked about from the weekend to practice for the next 2 weeks. I chose to review my list of values and rethink why I chose the ones I did. I will write this out in a separate blog post.

If nothing else, this yoga teacher training is making me think a lot! Not just about yoga, but also about myself, who I am, what I am doing, where I am going, etc... the whole nine yards.  And that is a good thing.