Embody Mental Health

Posts Tagged ‘sivananda’

 

“Serve, Love, Give, Purify, Meditate, Realize.” 

Swami Sivananda

What I expected to find in my foray into a monastic lifestyle and 5 am wake ups was a bit of delirium and a lot of discomfort.  This is true, there is no doubt.  But in the process, even 8 days into my 8 week internment into the monastic protocols of my Sivananda yoga teacher training I have also found a teensy bit of peace of mind that seems to, in my brighter moments, more than make up for complete body and mind exhaustion by day’s end.  Here is a bit inside my Sivananda world  and tandum work experience for a bit of insight into this whole endeavor:

Monday :

5am rising

6am-715am meditation

730 (early) to work-4:30pm TRAUMA THERAPY

5-600pm second work ADDICTIONS THERAPY

630pm Home to write some notes and go to sleep

Tuesday:

5am rising

6am-715am meditation

730 (early) to work-5:10pm (late staying and early coming most days because there is not enough time to come home between the two in the am and pm) TRAUMA THERAPY

5:30-6:45pm Yoga class (take or assist in the class)

7-10pm yoga academics class

10:30 Home for sleeps

Wednesday:

5am rising

6am-715am meditation

7:15-8:45am Yoga class

9-10:30am Yoga class (make up for missed class Mondays because of night job)

IF I can 11:00-12:00pm yoga class (make up for missed class on Friday because of night job)

12:30pm-9:00pm TRAUMA THERAPY

9:30pm Home for sleeps

Thursday:

5am rising

6am-715am meditation

730 (early) to work-5:10pm (late staying and early coming most days because there is not enough time to come home between the two in the am and pm) TRAUMA THERAPY

5:30-6:45pm Yoga class (take or assist in the class)

7-10pm yoga academics class

10:30 Home for sleeps

Friday

5am rising

6am-715am meditation

730 (early) to work-4:30pm TRAUMA THERAPY

5-7:30pm second work ADDICTIONS THERAPY

8:00pm Home to write some notes and go to sleep

Saturday

5am rising

6am-715am meditation

745-845am YOGA CLASS  (take or assist)

9-1030am YOGA CLASS (take or assist)

HOME FOR COLLAPSE J

Sunday:

7:45-8:30am Breathing class

8:30-9:00am Karmic yoga (ie: clean up the studio)

9-11:00am ADVANCED YOGA CLASS (take)

5:45-7:15 Meditation

7:15-8:15pm Vegetarian Pot Luck (mental note, must remember to make something each and every week—when I don’t know!)

WEEK 1 of yoga school completed.  WEEK 2 is moving forward–with or without my consciousness!  I am proud to say I have only had an emotional or exhaustion breakdown 1-2 times per day!  Hoping to maintain or improve over the next week!

Well, I had a post all ready to go but life and mild delirium got in the way and I left my power cord for my laptop at work and so I am starting from scratch and the other post will come when I juice back up my computer.  For now, grudgingly plodding away at my husband’s Apple laptop (which is a great machine but for a PC person a bit to figure out), I am going to begin again.  And in this I find a great metaphor for my life path right now.

There is nothing like taking your life and shaking out all the white noise, chemicals and hormones, and waking and “om”-ing at 5 am to make a person feel like they are starting from scratch on the whole.  I feel a bit disoriented, a little big quieter, and a tiny bit more delirious as I step into the last day of my first full week of yoga school.  One week down…seven more to go.

What I have learned so far:

• I am not as bendy as I thought I SHOULD be but much bendier than I have been before.
• A graduate degree in Clinical Social Work gives me zero “edge” in this world of quiet mind and intense educational practicum.
• I find a veggie lifestyle and omission of all the “white noise” of life (radio, television) overall far more satisfactory than I had imagined.
• Although I am still NOT a morning person I find myself more awake and enlivened with every new 5am waking.
• It is possible, be it exhausting at moments and delirious often, to immerse yourself in a monastic life even with one full-time job, one part-time job, and a family of husband and dogs (although a little wearing on the quality time).
• As much as I knew what to expect in this program I truly had no idea what I was getting myself into.
• That  (above statement) is more a good than a bad thing.
• Having a yoga teacher who can manifest into a drill Sargent at will is good for my need for structure and stretching (literal and metaphoric).
• Although my degree is useless in this new professional milieu the ideas of emotion and will and psychology do still come into play as much on the mat as in the world–and therapeutic mindset can be applied to best understand how students come into a class and out of whatever reality they exist in.
• This one is definitely a “DUH” moment: Taking Yoga Teacher Training means I am being trained fully to be a yoga teacher–I just really got that.  I thought it would be a wonderful tandem piece to learn in my integration of mind/body work and my passion for yoga in the therapeutic context but I guess, duh, it never occurred to me that in the process I would be fully prepared to lead a class myself–I saw myself as a teacher training student in an academic sort of way but never related that to being taught to be a hands-on, in the field yoga teacher.
• The above realization is both terrifying and exhilarating.
• While Thursday morning 6am meditations at the beach are messy there is something blissful and wonderful about watching the sun rise one sliver at a time between Sanskrit melodies.
• The amount I have learned about myself in the last week is astounding…and the prospect of seven more weeks of such an intensive exploration is very exciting and somewhat intimidating.
• I am finding more and more I love about the nuances and traditions of Sivananda yoga (the tradition I am learning): I will share more on this soon!
• I am already, of course as I do, found the two follow-up yoga trainings I want to take…but of course cannot afford right now:   Yoga of Recovery for Counselors Training Certification Course (Something new I have discovered created by a Sivananda yoga program director and another teacher)  &  Yoga for Depression and Anxiety with Amy Weintraub (I have heard so much about it I really want to get the training and see for myself)
• I can’t wait to see what the next week brings…this week brought me effortlessly into wheel and almost into a head stand on my own…that is pretty big for little ol’ me.

NAMASTE and Happy Weekend to everyone!  I am looking forward to my Sunday as we start at 7:45 am instead of 6:00am (like the other 6 days of the week) so I get to sleep in till 7!  The tiny pleasures .