Sunday, January 23, 2011

Sunday Night

One of the things that really strikes about this Immersion group is how soft and receptive they are as a group. I have learned a lot about teaching this week as I have reflected on the group's studentship. The group came ready to work and ready to receive the teachings and it has made for some deep shifts and some profound insights that are definitely full of "work" for the folks in the training but there is not a kind of struggle or resistance to that work and so there is a kind of ease and almost a measure of intensity that isn't there, in a good way. I might even describe it as a lack of drama.

Not that drama is bad or that other groups have been too dramatic or anything like that. It's just more to say and to recognize that each Immersion cycle is so different and each group has a unique flavor and it's fun to compare, reflect and identify the various configurations and the gifts that each group brings to the experience.

Today in the morning circle someone shared how they came to yoga through one of our students from a previous immersion and TT and I had a somewhat sobering, exhilarating and wonderful recognition that the work that we do in these Immersions really fans out into so many different communities and that my work touches so many more people that are in the room on any given day. I think I already knew that but to hear the love this student of my student had for her teacher filled me with so much gratitude and joy.

I have always said that my job as a teacher trainer is to help the yoga teachers I train be successful and so their success is my success in a way. (of course, the obvious corollary to this is that my mistakes also multiply and fan out...I did say it was a sobering though as well as an exhilarating thought, remember? That is part of why it is sobering!)

But anyway, as these immersion cycles continue it is so rewarding to bear witness to the ongoing shifts, changes and evolutions that are happening for people who whole-heartedly engage the process. It seems the deeper people go into their inner work during these trainings, there is a corresponding expanse in their outer life in the months and years that follow. People who might have really seemed "in it" and kind of mess (I mean that affectionately, ya'll) during the Immersions are super shifted in the following months.

This kind of reminds me of something a friend of mine was recently talking with me about in terms of integrity and her own process. She was saying how as she has cleaned up her life and rooted out seeds of dishonesty in all of her relationships, abundance in all domains is increasing exponentially. I don't think we engage the process for those reasons (nor was she saying that at all) but I offer these nuggets here as encouragement for all of us to dive deep when we have the opportunity and to give ourselves consistent opportunities to do inner work and to get messy and to even fall apart occasionally in the name of a larger process of unfolding and opening.

It can be so easy to view ourselves, our lives and each other as a snapshot that is frozen in time instead of seeing life as a moving picture, as a moving stream of images that each inform the other and yet where no one image is defining. Think about it- if you were to take a snap shot of yourself at some bleak moment of your life and then were to continue to live as though that was the reigning truth, it would seem ridiculous. But so often, when faced with difficulty we often see it like that. We sometimes think the moment will last forever. The truth is quite different. This moment is birthing the next moment and that moment will birth the following moment in an endless stream of ups and downs and hills and valleys. Truly, there is a lot of texture to life and it can be helpful to remember that fact when we or those we love or even those we don't like vey much at all are facing their demons and challenges interiorly or exteriorly.

Well, enough for now. Must go to bed and rest. I promises my acupuncturist I would try to sleep a lot.


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