On the road!

I am all packed and ready to go! I am only going as far as Salt Lake City tonight. Depending on the weather, I might play tourist and go see the famous Morman Tabernacle.

Monday, I will head to Bozeman, Montana. Noelle, from my group, is teaching her first class on Tuesday and I thought it would be nice to go to it. And Wednesday, weather permitting, I will be in Canada! Hooooray!

I will post when I get a chance. Thank you everyone for all your encouragement along the way on this incredible journey. It meant a lot to me.

Graduation!!!!!!

Bikram's grand entrance...



Waiting in line for my certificate...look at those rockin' shoes! Even Bikram complemented me on them!



Finally, the certificate! It's not a very clear picture, but you get the drift! They had a professional photographer so we'll get a copy of that one sent to us.



Ta-daaaa!


"Hello, my name is Shirley. I AM your yoga teacher!"

We had to say the above before every posture clinic dialogue. Now it is true!!

Week 9 done!!

The week of lasts. Our Friday morning yoga class was the last one with Rajashree. Our last lecture in the afternoon - I said goodbye to my chair lol! Then finally...our last class forever in teacher training! Bikram taught of course. I took a picture of myself in the side mirror just as the LAST class was starting.

The tent was packed with visiting teachers, family and friends. It was pandemonium in there at the end of the final breathing exercise. People were hugging, laughing, crying [me, of course! lol], clapping, and cheering. What a feeling it was!

We were given Friday night off. Leanne, Michelle, and I joined some other yogi's and yogini's at an Indian restaurant. When we got back to the hotel, we all gathered in my room, including Lisa. It was nice for the four of us to spend the last night together. Lisa slept over as her roommate's husband had arrived for grad, and they were in her room.

We are all still in stunned mode, not quite believing we are done!

What the Hell??

Bikram was lecturing again tonight, and we were given a pee break at 11:30. I am walking back to the lecture tent, and standing there are my friends Donny & Bevy Naclia from Westlock!!!! Another couple from Westlock/Smith, Connie & Gerald Brost are with them. They came for my grad, and I had absolutely no idea! It was one of those sureal moments where something is totally out of context. I was so happy and excited, I forgot to cry [for a change!]. I still can't believe they are here.

I took them over to the yoga tent to get a good whiff so they could get the real essence of the place. haha. Ulysses [owns the Mexico City studio] was there and he tried to convince them to come take 85-yr-old Emmy's class in the morning, but they are off touring the Grande Canyon tomorrow while I sweat it out in the yoga tent.

We had a great yoga class this afternoon with Craig. Such a knowledgable man. He is Bikram's right-hand man and he has been travelling the world giving Bikram lectures. It was such an awesome, energizing, positive class, something that has been missing the last few classes. We are now down to 4 more yoga classes and 4 more lectures. Wow. So close...

A Week of Lasts

This week will be the week of lasts. We had our last Saturday yoga class, and now we have finished our last Monday classes...8 to go...yee-haaah!

We had more posture clinic this afternoon, the last one, to get people up on the podium and do the intro and to string two or three postures together. I was totally not ready to do that, so I took a step back and let the rock stars shine.

Bikram started his posture lectures tonight. He will be going through each of the 26 postures and explaining the proper way to teach a beginner using the dialogue. I found it quite interesting. And the best part is that he let us go at 12:30. No movie!

I am blogging as Melissa is packing her bags. I am finding it fascinating to see how she is going to morph all the stuff she bought into one suitcase - ha! I will miss her though, it's been great to have her support - and it was fun too. :)

Pictures

The staff: Deepak, Christina, Misha, Dom, Cathy, Mark, Manali

Below are Posture Clinic room pictures.

Week 8 done!

Week 8 done...one to go! The countdown has begun.

I had a great weekend with Melissa, Michelle, and Leanne! We shopped until we dropped. We left the hotel Saturday at 1:30 and didn't get back until 10 pm! We had so much fun together, it was so nice to get out and not have to worry about studying dialogue.


Melissa and I were sleeping by midnight and didn't get up until noon! Sunday was a repeat of Sunday except we were home by 5:30 because Michelle and I were going out to our group dinners.

All in all, a nice ending to our week eight, and the start of our final week here. It's hard to believe we are nearing the finish line.

Melissa, single handedly increasing the economy of Las Vegas!

Group 8 dinner. The last time we will all be together now that Posture Clinic is done.

Thanksgiving

Today is American Thanksgiving. We were told earlier last week that we would be having a Thanksgiving dinner [totally paid for by Bikram himself] for all 300 of us but we didn't know any details.

So this morning after yoga class, we were told we had the rest of the morning and afternoon off and just had to sign in at 4:00 for dinner. Wow! A whole morning off...what do we do? Most of us just napped! Besides the nap, I got a haircut from Anthony, one of the yogi's here.

After the meal, it was open-mike and anyone could get up on the little platform stage and sing, play guitar, whatever. It was great fun. We have some seriously talented people here at training.

Sabre, Lisa, Me, Melissa

Our great staff (standing) - Christina, Cathy, Misha. Visiting teachers (sitting) Molly, Lisa

Group 8'er's

Manali

Dialogue Done!!

Yay!! We finished the last posture Wednesday afternoon - what a relief! The picture pretty much says it all. When we arrived at the lecture tent that evening, the staff had the techno-music on full force, and people were dancing everywhere. That went for a half-hour, then back to the business of learning!

Lynn gave a really, really interesting lecture on the business end of yoga, the etiquette, awareness, and responsibilities required of new yoga teachers. It was so informative, I didn't even mind that it went until 12:30! Actually, that's a relatively early night in Bikramland. ;0

One to go!!

I finished Rabbit yesterday and Head-to-Knee today, and now that there is only one left, I am finally getting less nervous getting up there in front of the teachers. I guess that is progress!

Last night was a late night as Bikram is back. We had an interesting lecture by him, and then it was Mahabarat time...until 2 am. Lecture again tonight - I wonder what time we will be sleeping tonight.

But the best news of all is Melissa arrives in about 2 hours!!!! I can't wait to see her. She will be here for a whole week so that is wonderful.

I have an hour now to get the last posture, Spine Twist, locked into my brain before lecture.

Wait!!! Melissa just walked in the door....yaaaay...crying again...

Week 7 and 75 classes done!

I thought when I had my emotional breakdown in week 3, I had pretty much cleared out the toxins in my cells. Wrong! Week 7 was another emotional week. It was a combination of lack of sleep [although not so bad since Bikram wasn't here most of the week], the pressure of memorizing dialogue, then saying the dialogue in Posture Clinic, plus the two yoga classes a day have been catching up to me. All my body parts have atrophied!

It is said that you keep all the memories of all your old hurts and injuries, whether emotional or physical, in the cells of your body. The yoga enables you to release these memories [and toxins] out of your system. Since I was a smoker for 30 years, even though I have not smoked for 5 years now, I would imagine some of those toxins were still in me. And let's face it, NO ONE [least of all me], goes through life without being emotionally or physically hurt or scarred at some point. This baggage can stay suppressed inside you. If you don't get it out, it shows up in the form of illness or dis-ease. In my case, it showed up as a buddha-belly, symbolically "stuffing my emotions in".

Physically, my body hasn't changed that much since I started here 7 weeks ago. I have lost some of my buddha-belly but I thought I would have lost some of that extra 30 lbs I have been carrying for the last 5 years. You burn 700-900 calories per class x 2 classes a day = 1400-1800 calories! A lot of students here are actually gaining weight. According to the teachers here, once we leave teacher training, in the next 3-6 months our bodies will be completely transformed. The excess weight will just melt away - I can't wait for that! Right now though, the body needs to hang onto those calories to get us through training.

I also now realize that taking a few yoga classes is not going to magically get rid of all of my baggage. It is a life-long journey, but once you give yourself permission to just let go of the crap from your past instead of clinging to it, it becomes easier and easier to move forward [in so many ways].


Damian from our Edmonton studio came for a visit. He went to teacher training with Melissa S.
Me and the Zen Master!

CPR

There was no Posture Clinic friday night which was just fine with me. Instead we had Nurse Lee showing some informational DVD's in preparation for our CPR course on Saturday afternoon.

At the end of friday evening's session, Manali made us all sit up straight, close our eyes, and she sang THE most beautiful meditation. I wish she did that every friday night. It was like she gave all of us a bit of CPR to get us to the finish line in two weeks.

Saturday morning, we had the most peaceful, serene class with Alison from Arizona. I don't know whether the serenity was from Alison's voice, or Manali's meditation the night before, or everyone was of one mind, or a combination of all of the above, but it was such a lovely class.

I have posted some pictures below of our CPR Saturday. My thanks to Pernille for leaving her camera here for me to use.

A Reprieve

We finally got a break tonight from Posture Clinic. Tonight plus the next day & a half we have "The Fascia Guy", Jon Burras. Besides lecturing on the fascia, he will also be discussing how your mind creates your own reality [and dis-eases], positive mind/positive body, the health-care conspiracy, and naturopathic/alternative healing. Sooo interesting! I love that stuff!!

And what is even wonderfuller(!) is we were let out at 11 pm...can you imagine?

Great words of wisdom from John Salvatore, our 5 pm class yoga teacher: "F.A.I.T.H. Finally Allowing It To Happen".

Three postures to go...

Dialogue

The teachers say that the one's who struggle the most with their dialogue end up being the best teachers because they work so hard at it, and it stays with them longer. If that is the truth, I am going to be the BEST DAMN TEACHER in the world!!! Oh, I am having such a hard time with it. I get nothing but good feedback and great encouragement, but I am feeling very discouraged right now. I did Half-Tortoise this afternoon, and again it was choppy and slow. I just wanted to give up.

I had a little pity party for one during yoga class this afternoon, and cried it out. We had a great kick-ass visiting teacher, Lisa. It was the first time I was crying AND still kept doing the postures, that's how motivating she was! It also helped that she asked the teachers to move up into empty spaces among the students, and Damien was a couple of rows in front of me. That helped a lot. She played Bob Marley's "Everything's Gonna Be Alright" at the end of class. That made me cry more, but it also felt like a message JUST for me.

I am not writing this for you to feel badly for me. This blog is my journal, and I am "trusting the process" that [like the song says] everything's gonna be alright. I want to be able to look back on this, and go "Ah, now I see...". Maybe it will also help future students.

I am okay now, just knowing there are only 4 postures left and Melissa will be here one week from today!!!

Week 6 done!

It was so nice to sleep in on Saturday. After the 11 am class, I went back to my room and sorted laundry. I hadn't gone to the laundramat for the past 3 weeks. I had bought a portable clothes drying rack before I left, so I handwash my yoga clothes after class, but it was time to give them a good wash and freshen the rest of my clothes. At the laundramat, I studied Bow Pose.

After laundry, it was back to my room for a nap, and then get ready to go outside "the Bubble". Michelle had gotten 8 tickets to see Chelsea Handler, a comedienne, at Caesar's Palace. This was the first time I had ventured out into the Las Vegas world for something other than groceries and laundry. The show was hilarious, although I must say that I actually thought the opening act, ? Wolfe was much funnier than Chelsea, but it was all good. We were all tired when the show was done, and were happy to get back to into our yoga bubble. There is waaaay too much sensory over-stimulation out there in the Lost Wages world - the slot machine noise, the crowds, the cigarette smoke, the traffic - oy vey, can't take it for long.

This morning, Michelle and I went to Whole Foods for groceries. We memorized Fixed Firm pose on the drive there and back. Never waste an opportunity to study!

We had arranged for the group to meet Pernille and Michael at the buffet for 2 o'clock as that was when P was finished her re-certification. Michelle and I got back just at 2, we were in line, and I look behind me and there is Lisa, Pernille, Michael AND DAMIEN!!!! OMG!!! We are THE luckiest training group!! For those of you that don't know, Damien teaches at the Edmonton studios, and went to teacher training with Melissa in Acapulco. So great to see him!

So far, we had Melissa D. and Shawna for 5 days, they just leave and P arrives, she leaves then Damien arrives. Damien is here until friday, and Melissa S. arrives the next Tuesday. We have such a wonderful studio of teachers and such wonderful support!!

6 more postures and then we are done Posture Clinic. Yay! That has been the hardest for me, the memorization, so I had better get at it! Start of week 7 tomorrow which means only 15 school days left before we are teachers...wow, still can't imagine it!

Darn!

Happily, we were let out of Dr. Choudhury's lecture at 11:30 pm. That meant a whole seven hours of sleep last night. It was actually harder to get up this morning than the two-hour sleep the night before.

This afternoon's lecture was so interesting. Rajashree was discussing each posture and the medical benefits of each. As she was lecturing she had two demonstrators, Joseph and Courtney doing the postures. Joseph is the USA yoga champ, and Courtney is the USA and World yoga champ. Amazing, amazing postures! I will post some pictures on the weekend.

Tonight was posture clinic. Pernille said she was going to try and get in my group, and she did! It was so awesome to see her walk into that room! Unfortunately, I didn't get to say Bow in the room. :( We were told we were going until midnight, then just as I was next in line [again!] at 11 o'clock, they said that's it for the night...darn! I did get a chance however to say the pose for her in my room just before posture clinic, and she gave me wonderful encouragement, so that was really nice.

We get to sleep in tomorrow...sweet! Because this is re-certification weekend, they changed our 8am class to 11am so all of us can take the class at once.

Happy belated birthday, Laura-Marie! Meant to say this in yesterday's blog, but forgot. I hope it was a great day! Now you are older than me again...yes!

A New Record...so far.

So it was bollywood again last night. I am sure you can imagine how happy the 300 trainees were. Bikram lectured until 1:30 and then announced we had a 5-minute break, then we'll put the movie on! I had my territory marked out, so the minute the lights went out, I went down!! In went the earplugs, knapsack for a pillow, and shawl for a blanket, and I was asleep! We got back to our rooms at 5 am!

Two hours sleep, and back down to the tent for yoga! Rajashree [Bikram's wife] taught the class so that made up for the lack of sleep. She sounded a little mad that Bikram kept us up that late, especially since she was going to be lecturing today and everyone was going to be falling asleep in it. So she said "I'll give you an easy class", and it was. I slept in the tent for an hour afterwards.

Now it is back down to the lecture tent for Rajashree and a Dr. Choudhury lecture on women's issues...should be really interesting. We have no problem staying awake because we have what we call the "Sleep Police" - teachers who walk up and down the side aisles, and watch for sleepers and the person sitting next to them have to nudge them awake...no, really...I am not making this up! haha

And happy, happy stuff for the Edmonton Sextet...the owner of the southside and downtown Edmonton studios, Pernille [and Michael] arrived today!! We saw them just before our 5 pm class. Pernille is doing her 3-yr recertification this weekend, along with 80 other teachers here.

Postures, Postures, Postures

Monday afternoon and evening have been posture clinics as well as Tuesday morning. I am barely keeping up with memorizing the dialogue for the next posture. Last night (Tuesday), we had posture clinic until 11pm, AND THEN Bikram lecture to start at 11:30 pm. We watched Mahatabarat (sp??) until 3 am.

I always manage to save an end seat for these nights. Last night, as soon as the movie started, everyone was hitting the floor to sleep. I was right by the glass exit doors we aren't allowed to go out of. There was a nice street light coming in through the door, so I stretched out on the floor in front of it, propped Full Locust Posture in front of my water bottle and studied until 1:30 am. Then I decided nothing was going in my brain so I slept until they turned the lights on to go back to our rooms at 3 am!

To top it off, we had to get up extra early this morning as they were taking a group picture of us on the top floor of the parking garage. The photographer was on the roof of the hotel looking down at us. They used our 300 bodies to spell BIKRAM. Cool...except for the getting up early part.

They announced tonight is the same thing...posture clinic until 11 pm, then a Bikram lecture/movie. I guess I will be studying Bow Pose...or sleeping.

Week 5 done!

In this picture, Alison [teacher from west Edm. studio], Shauna, Leanne, Shirley, Amy, Sharon, Michelle, Melissa D., Lisa.

Saturday morning's yoga class was extra special because Melissa D. and Shauna were there. I cried again when I saw them standing in front of the yoga tent! And we had a kick-ass class from Misha. We gave her a standing ovation, which made her cry! There is soooo much crying around here, that you are weird if you aren't crying! haha

I went to the brunch buffet with Sunny, then the usual Trader Joe grocery shopping with Sunny and Michelle. It was close to 5:30 when we got back. We were supposed to go for sushi with Leanne, Lisa, Shauna, and Melissa D., but both Michelle and I decided we were too pooped to go out again. I studied some of Wind Removing Pose, and watched TV until 10, then crashed.

I have been fighting a cold this weekend, so have been trying to just rest, and really don't feel up to doing much of anything. I have been taking my Audra meds that she gave me and they seem to be doing the trick. Missed dinner with the girls again, but Leanne got a take-out salad for me [such a sweetheart] and they all came up to my room after dinner tonight so that was great.

Happy Birthday Brenda S.! I hope you had a great day yesterday! Hugs.

A really, REALLY Wonderful Surprise!!

So friday night after dinner, I was in my jammies, curled up in bed watching TV - what a luxury that was! At 11:30, there was a knock on my door and it was Lisa and Leanne with sad looks on their faces. I thought "oh, oh, what's wrong", and then out jumped Melissa D. and Shauna T.!!!!!!! Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God! I screamed, and then just hugged and hugged and hugged them! It was so surreal!

Melissa D. and Shauna T. are teachers from our home studio in Edmonton. Melissa D. had been mentoring Lisa, Michelle, Amy and I before we left, and Shauna is Leanne's sister. None of us had any idea they were coming. Oh boy, I am starting to cry again as I am writing this.

I texted Michelle, and told her Lisa and Leanne were in my room, and to come on down. We hid Melissa and Shauna in the bathroom. So Michelle came down. The four of us were just sitting around on the beds chatting, and Melissa and Shauna came sneaking around the corner on their hands and knees. Michelle screamed, then started crying, then we were all crying again, and hugging.

It's really hard to explain how much it means to us to have them here - it's like a lifeline has been thrown to us, that we'll be okay now, and we can make it through to the end.

Standing Series Done!

We finished the Standing Series friday afternoon! Anyone who hadn't done Tree Pose on Thursday night had to do Tree & Toe at the same time. We had a wonderful lead teacher, Norma-Jean, plus [I was so happy to see] Sunny was also one of the teachers sitting in.

My Toe Stand went well, probably the best so far. I don't know whether it was because of Sunny's smiling happy face, or the exhaustion, but I was just more relaxed and the dialogue flowed. It was a such nice feeling because I was starting to lose all confidence in myself of being able to do this!

At our 5 pm yoga class, Bikram announced we could have the night off! You could not even imagine the sound of cheering in the room, we were all soooo happy! Rumour was we were going to be watching a bollywood movie.

After yoga, Patty [from my group] and I went to the Dragon Restaurant here in the hotel. It was so nice to just relax and enjoy a hot meal and not have to be studying dialogue at the same time and then race off to be at lecture or posture clinic.

Breakdown Week

Week 5 is breakdown week. What that means is almost everyone is either crying, laughing hysterically, or really really angry. The combination of sleep-deprevation, posture clinic twice a day, dialogue memorization, and yoga twice a day accelerates the process of getting rid of the crap [mentally and physically] out of your system. It wasn't so bad for me since I had my crying week a couple of weeks ago. Don't get me wrong, I still had my share of tears this week, but it wasn't as intense as before.

I managed to be the last one to get Tree Pose in on Thursday night. The lead teacher said we'll take two more, then wrap it up for the night. So I jumped up and got in the queue [This is in the foyer/entrance of the suite, where we prepare/freak out/calm down before we walk into the "yoga room", the main area of the room in front of everyone].

They were talking a long time to the guy who presented before me, and then the lead teacher said that all for tonight. I said "Noooooooo, I have been back here doing Pranayama Breathing for 5 minutes! Please let me go, plllllleeeease!". And the rest of the Group 8'er's were cheering to let me do my dialogue. So they said okay, and it certainly was NOT my best performance. There seemed to be a 10-second delay between my brain and my mouth - probably that sleep-deprevation thing! My group said I did fine, and the teacher-feedback was okay, but I was disappointed. But it's done, so great, move on, start studying Toe Stand for tomorrow morning!

Hump Day!

Today is exactly 1/2 way through training. Wow.

I'm going a little into sleep-deprevation mode. We studied Triangle last night in my room until 2 am. There was a knock on my door at 1:30, and it was Security telling us to keep it down please, they've had 2 complaints about the noise. Oops!

I did a good Triangle dialogue in front of Diane Ducharme [from Boston] so I felt good about that.

Sunny [from Melissa's teacher training] has arrived, so it was great to see her and get a big hug! I never saw Julie from the Edmonton West studio at all when she was here.

Gotta sleep fast now as one of the Group 8'ers is coming at 6 am so we can memorize Standing Separate Leg Head to Knee Pose for Posture Clinic tomorrow morning.

Rock on...

Well, I did Standing Separate Leg Stretching Pose really good, and I actually saw the bodies!! Yeah! I hope that continues through the rest of them now. My homework is to punch out at the end...literally...make a fist and punch to get more emphasis at the end. Growing up with 3 brothers, that shouldn't be too hard to do. :)

So it is now 11:40pm and the night has just begun. Three other people from Group 8 are coming to my room [since I don't have a roommate] so we can memorize Triangle for tomorrow morning. I'll let you know what time we finish. The fun has just begun!

I did it again

I have been trying so hard to look at the bodies, which is my homework, while I am doing the dialogue and I can't seem to be able to do it. I blanked out again last night for Balancing Stick, and then missed a line, then mixed up some lines. Ug! I had really nice feedback though, they were very gentle with me!

On a happier note, Anatomy is done...hurray!! The exam yesterday was on the nervous, endocrine, respiratory, digestive, and urinary systems. I was freaking out about that too over the weekend but I got 39/50, for a total of 79% overall for the two exams so I am VERY happy about that. Now I can just concentrate on dialogue from now on.

Pictures

Thanks to Leanne for her pictures...