I came across Yoga Limbs' 20 day intensive teacher training course just a few weeks before it was due to begin and enrolled the following week, a day after I left my job in finance. I had been training with a personal trainer for some years at a gym and enjoyed yoga and pilates as a compliment to that regime. It was not until the end of Day One, however, that I began to seriously question whether I was mentally or physically prepared for 4 hours of flow practice and 6 hours of asana workshops daily. I went to bed that evening utterly destroyed, as if I'd been hit with a tranquilizer gun.

My classmates and I returned to the studio the next morning, somewhat defeated to say the least, and that second day was spent literally going through the motions, trying to keep our chatarangas above water. It wasn't really until Day 4, close to the end of Week 1, that the magic of yoga began to reveal itself in each of our bodies. Personally, that was the day that I began to physically feel a fresh crop of blood flowing through my muscles, experience a new energy and lightness in my vinyasa and actually visualize the functioning of each of my organs and the movement in each of my joints as if I were a computer generated image in a documentary on anatomy!

This was also the day that our first meditation exercise, one that actually lasted 20 minutes but only felt like 5, made us realize how far we had come in such a short time on our metaphysical journey.

By the close of Week 2, as expected, much of this euphoria has mellowed in to an acceptance of the fact that not everyday will witness a breakthrough. As the practice becomes more vigorous, my body has certainly yielded to pain and fatigue that has ultimately caused pain (wrist, shoulder, knee, you name it). As the 3rd week begins, however, and I scan my body and mind to assess my progress, I remind myself that for change to happen, one has to push at the outer edge of comfort.and watch that edge expand and widen. With that in mind, I'm looking forward to the change that takes place over the next 10 days and to carry that forward into everyday life.