Yoga in Practice

[kmlseattle]

I just finished my first at-home yoga practice of 2010. In fact, it's the first at-home practice I've done in quite some time. While I was studying to be a yoga teacher last year, my teachers told us that you can't teach what you don't do. And the way you do is not only to attend yoga classes, but to create an at-home practice. Well, it was tough, but I was able to add an at-home element to my days when yoga was pretty much all I was concentrating on. But kids and schedules and injuries and other things conspired against me and whatever at-home practice I had fell by the wayside. In the early Spring I had a knee injury that sidelined my running, but I managed to start that up again over the Summer and I have more or less kept with that. Now it's time to rejuvenate my at-home yoga practice. In addition to my need to do yoga more often just for myself, I still want to be a yoga teacher. I've got my 200-hour certification, I'm teaching a kids' yoga class after school at my kids' school, but I want to do more. And, I know, I have to start with me. I've realized I can't preach what I don't practice. I'll never be a good yoga teacher if I don't practice, practice, practice. I will not regain the confidence I had at the end of the 200-hour program if I stick with my 2-, sometimes 3-, day a week practice with my teacher. I have to become my own teacher and then I'll be ready to teach others.

So, today is day one. I don't know how tomorrow or this week will go. All I know is that I need to take that next step. I've been thinking about how to develop a practice and I think I'm going to start with Judith Lasater's book "Living Your Yoga". Between a prescribed list of asanas and the preps I learned in my classes I hope this will be a good place to start growing my practice.