Today is Thursday 24th September (2009) and in a few hours I will be traveling to the Mandala Yoga Ashram for my first residential weekend on their 2 year yoga teacher training course. Before long I will be at the ashram and meeting the 22 other prospective teachers and forming relationships.

My pre-course home work is done and I can forget about my move to Cheshire for a few days. Life is very full at the moment, moving on the 17th October, starting a new job with more responsibility, and having to prepare two workshops for early November. At the moment I’m hoping I can get everything done, including the home work from this weekend and the October weekend (weekend after I move). If you were to see everything I’m needing to do between now and the end of the year, you would want to take me away for a nice holiday in January, any offers? lol

Since July 2008 I have moved twice, and next month I move again, so I’m feeling a little displaced and unsettled at the moment. I would really like to develop a social life and a group of friends; however, once I am moved I should be able to do that, and the yoga teacher training course has plenty of people, so I am hoping that I will feel less and less like a spare part on the shelf as the rest of the year unfolds.

So I wonder what the course and my life it will be like, hopefully I will get time to share my journey with you.

This month has seen me sign up for a yoga teacher training course (YTTC) with the Mandala Yoga Ashram and join the British Wheel of Yoga (BWY). The YTTC starts on September 25th 2009 and runs for 2 years part time residentual.

Yesterday I returned from a residential hatha yoga course (“Creating Space” hosted at the Mandala Yoga Ashram).  This turned out to be an excellent opportunity for me to get to know one of the teachers on the upcoming Yoga Teacher Training course. As always meeting interesting people is always a part of these trips, with some good chats on all levels, and plenty of humour.

In terms of yoga, the concept of counter pose was very interesting, I had previously understood this to be placement of a posture that balances the previous one, for example, placing  a forward bend after a backward bend. What I hadn’t considered before, was placing a static posture after a dynamic one, or balancing the pingala and ida (vibrant and relaxing energies) using postures in certain ways. Not to mention what do you want out of the practice, you might want to end up in a relaxed state before bed, so working toward more gentle and calming postures towards the end of the sequence can be desirable.

Thursday afternoon I shall be visiting the Mandala Yoga Ashram for a Hatha yoga course which runs until Sunday.  Although I have been on to classes, workshops and retreats, I have not been on a yoga course before, so it should be interesting. The content of the course looks interesting but it will also be useful to help me decide if I want to undertake the Yoga Teacher Training Course they offer. The deadline for applications is the 30th of this month, with interviews in June.