One more week to go!

As I sit here, busy preparing for the written and practical exams, I look back on Week Three. I can't help but marvel at the humbling achievements we've all made personally and as a group, and also for the mental and spiritual breakthrough for me.

Week Three was tough, seriously. We began the week happy we've past the half-way mark, felt the helplessness mid-week at the amount of studying, and ended the week tired yet content.

Personally it was about staring at the staggering amount of studying in the face, and knowing all I need do is gather my notes together and do my revision thoroughly. I'm proud that even though I do not know the perfect answers for the questions on poses in the exam, I do remember the moment I paid attention in class, and I'd know where to find the information here and there.

Physical breakthroughs made our confidence. Week Three witnessed my major breakthroughs: enough core muscle for a supported head-stand beginning and enough shoulder and back muscle to come up to a full back bend wheel. My group mates also achieved poses that they set as goals for themselves at the beginning of the course. I am truly humbled and grateful that I have trained, put my body to the test, and have been rewarded.

Spiritual-wise, I've come to a stage of full understanding of the Philosophy of yoga. For a long time, I felt that the accepting nature of Yoga meant peace, calm, but also the danger of lethargy and lack of motivation to better oneself. After much pondering, I accept what I can of my new knowledge, keep what I have of my original belief, and declare my stance and explain it should you ask about it.

Week Three was about putting the jigsaw pieces together and seeing the big picture. Just in time for the final week.

This last weekend marked the end of the 3rd week of our 4 week intensive YTTP. It was a time to reflect back and to take stock, both in body and mind, of the progress/change/evolution that may (or may not) have taken place for me over the last 20 days of my life:
Days 1 thru 4 - I could barely produce a decent chaturanga.and I was almost entirely focused on bringing my body back into yoga shape, strengthening my core, getting my alignment right, building stamina to be able to get through two 90 min and one 60 min session per day with 6hrs of asana workshops in between. Very much a physical focus.
By the end of the first week - Lighter in my step, lighter in my vinyasanas, beginning to have fun on the mat, even though muscles were sore.I began to realize how little sleep my body was able to function on and how the energy that I was creating within my body was actually far greater than the energy I was expending. Beginning to harness life force beyond just oxygen and fuel.
Then, as we moved into Discussion Groups on the philosophy behind the practice, things started to take on a whole new dimension..the one that Dennis and Lawrence Fishburne/Morpheus had warned us about..the one where once you know/feel, becomes near impossible to deny. So here, at the end of Week 3 and embarking on the last leg of this short term journey that is the 20 day programme, I am finding it very difficult to divorce what I have learned at the studio from my everyday life. First my body, then my intellect and now my intuition have been exposed/awakened to a simple set of universal truths and processes. Being Hindu, I suppose I always knew of them, but the fact that I now ?know them', is making life feel a little like a 3-D movie (although in yogic terms, that would be 6 or 7-D, I suppose). For example:
I went to see a classical Indian concert with my family on Saturday evening by world reknowned percussionist, Zakir Hussain and 5 others, each playing different classical instruments.
Each musician took his turn to play a solo and began his individual set with a set of slow, deliberate notes in repetitive patterns with nothing fancy to punctuate the flow, just honest, hard work. This prelude would go on for a good length of time, and it was in that commitment to deliver the perfect sequence over and over again, that the music began to tell the story of the years of effort and commitment, or tapas, that the artist must have put in with his guru (Indian musical training, as in yoga, is also undertaken with Guru as Guide).
The pace would then hasten, chords would become more complex and suddenly but seamlessly, the lone musician would be producing sounds that one might have expected from a quartet. His hands would begin to move so fast that they were becoming indistinguishable from his instrument and you had to choose between focusing on this with awe, or on his face, with that serene smile and clear connection to bliss - so that now the audience was experiencing both awe and bliss.
Once each musician had completed his individual set, some would play in pairs - and here you could see how the connection between the two was not through scripted music (there was none) and not through improvisation (they were not jamming, but playing precisely the same note, simultaneously, on vastly different instruments) but through a channel of energy that they had built between themselves.and then with us, the audience.
The concert culminated in the 6 musicians playing, not as an orchestra, but as One..not playing the same notes now, but rather playing in such perfect Unity that the tunes of one flowed into the other like water and fire, earth, air and space coming together to form a complete universe of perfect sound. If I can ever claim to be Enlightened, I think this may have been the moment.late Saturday evening, when the house lights came up and I saw the yoga in the music and the universe in yoga..

Oh my god, time flies, only one more week left! I cannot believe it. All our asana workshops are replaced by teacher workshops and discussion groups. There are a lot of inputs this week. Learnt a lot of yoga philosophy, teaching skills and assisting technique.

I have just notice that I have not wear makeup and high heels for three weeks now. Not to mention shopping. I am ground to earth, I do not care about what I look like, and I do not care about what people think I look like. I guess I am just focusing more about myself rather than what others think about me.

The yoga philosophy is actually difficult, because it's something new and different for me. I took a lot of time to digest all the information as well as to understand them. I learnt about I am the universe and the universe is me. Happiness is what the universe wants from us.

I realize that using prop is very helpful. I am so scared of inversions, especially which requires my head upside down. I never have the confident to do bakasana, as I am so scared that I might break my neck. On Friday, I put the bolster between my head and the mat, which makes my head really close to the bolster. Amazingly, I can hold my bakasana, which is fantastic. It's actually the highlight of the week.