What brought me to the next level of Yoga Teacher Training?
 
This is a very personal question to me… and the answer has to do, I guess, with my insecurities… By nature – by the original nature that I had no say about, the nature I was born with, and then shaped by my family and by my experiences in life, so by this nature I… have a tendency not to believe in my own abilities, I am not a self-confident person. I constantly fight with the fear of not being able to achieve my goals and the awful feeling of: “I am not good enough.” Yoga not only eliminated this feeling, Yoga is filling me in with a confidence and an inner peace. Four years ago I believed Yoga Teacher Training was beyond my abilities. I never dreamed that I would be able to understand yoga poses, or yoga itself – whatever it means. I wasn’t able to imagine myself standing in front of people, talking to them for a full hour in English, teaching them poses that lead to relief and moments of deep reflection! Yoga was (and still is) like a huge ocean for me, where I am a little fish but… somehow this ocean seems to be friendly to me, and calming, not scary or harsh. Somehow, even that I am only a little, very little fish, I feel in this ocean secure enough to swim freely. When I am tired or cold, I can take a break, and then I can continue to swim with renewed energy. No need to worry, just continue forward in a peaceful rhythm of a stable swim. When I come to my mat – especially on the days when doubts haunt me, when people, places, and things disappoint me, when I do not see a glimmer of hope on the horizon – on this mat I find what I miss, all over, all over again. I like to swim, when I refer to yoga as an ocean, I mean that it gives me pleasure and a sense of belonging to something much, much greater than myself and… I don’t feel alone. Well… since I found in yoga a sense of inner peace, I realized I want to help others to discover the feeling of accepting life on its own terms. Each of my yoga practices brings a different experience, and it’s always (no matter what) a spiritual one. The dream of completing the training was born some time ago as a HUGE, unimaginable dream, something not achievable for me. I haven’t felt good enough back then to have a dream that big. Here I am today… and I still have my moments of doubts: will I be able to teach more than I do now, should I even teach more? Should I open a studio? Maybe I am not as good as other teachers? Yes, I am not, but I have realized by observing other teachers that I am not that terrible. It is about the process of self-realization, and not for looking for perfection. I finally started to get this “simple” truth. Well… my spiritual, personal journey brought me to this point of learning/training, my inner voice didn’t lie to me. I feel like it’s a cherry on my life’s cake – this yoga… I was raised in a Catholic, orthodox family from Poland, the country where there is a lack of diversity, where everyone is thinking the same, dressing the same, going to the same church, eating the same food, judging others the same way… After the catholic experience, I had a protestant experience as well, here, in America; interesting experience of a protestant church where I have learned a lot. And more than 10 years ago I stopped drinking my “lovely” wine, and gin and tonic, and I attended AA where I discovered a concept of a Higher Power. All of these concepts of God made me feel confused, but also forced me to keep digging and to realize what this Higher Power even means to me. Yoga came to me as a solution, or as a sweet filling for these 3 layers of spiritual identity. It helped me to make a peace with myself, and answered questions I had: which view or concept is the most accurate? Today I KNOW and I feel, I come to the mat and I experience. The training and the practices of yoga help me to love myself and accept the reality in which I live as it is. Well… my teacher, Julie from Lotus Yoga in Cleveland Hts., brought me to this particular training I just recently completed. I now see that it was the best investment I made in my life. Watching her walking the walk, and not talking the talk makes me feel, that I want to be more with her, and learn more from her. Every time she teaches our class I feel a spiritual connection with something bigger. Why? I cannot explain this. I only wish I had realized that before I moved out from the area so I could have more access to her teaching. Thankfully I finally found a good yoga studio in my new area, so I “feel home again”.