Treetop Yoga Teacher Training Graduate Lisa Lunnen reflects on her journey with yoga, teaching, and life.
I’ve spent some time really thinking about the benefits of my Teacher Training at Treetop Yoga Studio. I’ve spent time thinking about my life before and after teacher training, about teachers that shared so much with me. Should I write about the discipline it gave to my personal practice? My experiences with meditation? The exhilaration of actually doing a hand stand again? As I continued mulling over 6 or 8 possible, valid and amazing topics, the subject of my first blog came to me. One of the greatest byproducts of my Teacher Training, is Reflection. Yoga has somehow reopened a larger channel of connection between my mind and heart.
Reflection is one of several gifts I’ve received from my yoga practice. As a girl, I spent many happy hours daydreaming and writing stories, poems and reading. As a woman, I’ve spent a lifetime getting ready for the next event, getting my family, my home, my children, my career in line, and on track. I’ve been proficient, professional, productive and happy. I’ve also at times been harried, impatient, not always clearly seeing things that were directly in front of me. At times hiding in the schedules of my life.
I’ve recently been reflecting about our cultural obsession with our looks, body image, hair, makeup……Beauty. I began to just look at my hands, turning them over, really noticing them. As a young woman, I was blessed with truly beautiful hands, long slender fingers, smooth skin, well shaped nails. I believe at one point I was quite vain about those hands, keeping them perfectly manicured and oiled.
With the passing of time these same hands became immersed in life, always holding Keith’s warm, sturdy hand, painting bedrooms, tending babies, making quilts, cooking dinners, planting gardens, stroking pets, giving haircuts and styles beyond counting. As I look at these same hands, stronger again through my yoga practice, (another unexpected benefit) I see average hands, bumpy veins, scars, marks, nails I often forget about. These hands have crafted and shaped my life, but now they gently come to lay on the foreheads of my students, bringing a bit of care and the scent of lavender oil. I wouldn’t trade a single activity for my smooth hands of old.
It’s easy to bring to mind memories of the hands that fill my life, tiny, delicate baby hands, sticky, chubby toddler fingers. A most cherished visual image of a hand, is the small elderly hand of my mother, pouring me coffee in a worn, familiar mug. Passing me toast on a napkin. Nothing beautiful and everything precious. See there I go, reflecting again.
So if you’re thinking about Teacher training, don’t stay pretty on the sidelines, dive in, get sweaty, get sore, read, learn, laugh!
Namaste
Lisa