Training

Having finished a forty day Nabhi Kriya, I was feeling fortified.  This is a kriya with a lot of leg lifts.  It is intense, but completely do-able.  Nabhi Kriya works on the third chakra, the upper chakra in the lower triangle.  The next kriya that I chose for myself was Transforming the Lower Triangle to the Upper Triangle, feeling as if it were time to raise the energy.  It was also time to raise the bar.  This set is full of positions that are very difficult for me, most of which I can’t actually do perfectly, if at all.  Camel pose poses a great amount of difficulty.  Fish pose in celibate pose is almost impossible, for I am neither.  Plow pose?  Can’t do it, my feet dangle over my head and won’t get near the floor.  What kind of yogi am I?  And I call myself a teacher?  I practiced Kundalini Yoga for over 20 years (off and on) before I committed to becoming a teacher.  Why?  Because I could not do it perfectly.  One night, during a tumultuous time in my life (weren’t they all?), my teacher, Guru Singh, came to me in a dream.  In the dream I was in his class and he came up to me and asked me if I was going to take teacher training.  I told him honestly that I could not do much of what I would have to teach.  I felt as if I needed to be double jointed to be a yoga teacher.  He pointed out that my thumb was double jointed. True, said I.  He said that was a good place to start.  The next day, remembering the visitation in my dream, I committed to take teacher training, and my life began to change immediately.  Teacher training has given me a sense of value, of expression, and of purpose.  I honor those Level One trainees that are graduating from Yoga West this weekend, I am so proud of them all, and I pray that their lives become as blessed and beloved as mine has become.  It is not easy.  Transformation is never easy, yet always rewarding, even if it’s just transforming from the lower triangle to the upper triangle.  As Guru Singh says, we are not here to prove anything, we are here to improve everything.  Sat Nam.

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