THANKFUL FRIDAY

Way back, in what feels like another life (it kind of was another life), I taught a lot of yoga. Teaching yoga made me feel joyful and confident. The day-to-day job and living conditions did not make me feel joyful or confident. So I piled on classes to offset. When we moved to Kansas City, I put a hold on teaching yoga to give myself time to settle into a new job and a new home. During this time of settling in, my personal yoga practice grew into something very strong and beautiful and it is this practice that has kept me from leaping off tall buildings.

I am now back to teaching two yoga classes a week. The new schedule started last week and yesterday was the first time in over two weeks where I rolled out my mat for my own practice and trying to remind myself that reason for this is not because of my new teaching schedule. Teaching yoga changes your personal practice. Your personal practice turns into poses to balance out your body from teaching and lots of savasana. In the before now times, I always struggled to find time in my day for my own practice. Between work and teaching gigs and the time spent getting from one place to another, I just didn’t have the time for myself. The boundary line between teaching yoga and having my own practice got blurry. I am injured and I’ve been taking my time getting back into things like walking and yoga, but I don’t want my classes and my injury to become my goto excuse for not getting on my mat. Yesterday’s practice was gentle and challenging and ended with a fifteen minute savasana. It was everything I needed and a reminder to maintain some boundaries. It is no surprise for any one of you to hear that I struggle with maintaining boundaries. Many of us find it difficult to maintain healthy boundaries. The boundaries I set for myself maintain a very important work/life balance, one that doesn’t take much for me to mess up.

This is the snowball time year. We are only three months away from a new year. This is the time of year when our boundaries keep us sane. My situation is no where close to what it was all those years ago. I’m happy with my job and content with my living space. There is no reason for that teaching yoga/doing yoga boundary to get blurry. I am grateful for my hiatus from teaching yoga. That time allowed me to deepen and establish a strong personal practice, but that time away also made me appreciate how much I enjoy the art of teaching. I am grateful for this balance of feeling really good about the classes I teach and really good about the alone time I spend on my mat.

And I feel really good about this current balancing act.