Yogarina

My first job in the Bay Area earned me a fair amount of dough, lots of experience, a life long friend, mentors and a repetitive stress disorder called Myofascial Syndrome. Working in the marketing department at Oracle in the mid nineties meant 12-16 hr workdays, 1-2 hours of bumper to bumper commuting from the city, sitting in a chair staring and interacting with the computer all day and often at night when I got home and on weekends. One year later, I'm sitting in my office about to type an email when I feel a tingling in my left hand. It continues to worsen throughout the day but of course I ignore it. Try to shake it off. By the end of the week I have a piercing pain that shoots from the top of my left shoulder down my arm and into my fingers. Its too painful to turn a doorknob and typing on the computer is out of the question. Sadly, my situation wasn't unique. Several people I worked with had endured similiar even more serious ailments of the carpel tunnel and tendonitis variety. Everyone referred me to a chiropractor nearby that had half of the employee base of Oracle as his patients. After 6 months of physical therapy my condition improved and I was lucky enough to reverse the damage. Mostly he did deep (read painful) stretching of my neck and shoulder area, a few adjustments and had me do lots of stretching exercises on my own. My muscles had literally atrophied. A turning point that I would always remember.

From then on, I started stretching at my desk and throughout the day, getting up every half hour or so so that my body wouldn't get too stiff (still working all hours but at least not turning to stone). I started "working out" and took a yoga class at the Oracle gym every Monday and Wednesday nights. The yoga practice helped tremendously and of course it also helped with the stress of my workaholic existence. Since then, I've never stopped doing yoga - all types, Hatha, Ashtanga and for the two years we lived on S Van Ness in the Mission, I even got into the at first suffocatingly hot Bikram way.

Fast forward 10+ years. One of the things on my list of "to dos" here in Argentina was first, find good yoga and eventually look into teaching programs. The first 5 months kept me busy with learning spanish. It was survival and consumed all my attention and energy. When friend Joni visited last month she brought me a mountain of magazines. One of them was the latest YogaJournal. Reading through it and seeing some of the ads for teacher training in the states and other exotic locales I was reminded of my desire to teach and that unchecked item on my list. Also, my favorite teacher from Yogatree in the Castro was featured in a bold 8 page spread - beautiful and 8 months pregnant demonstrating prenatal poses. Seeing her was another god moment. I decided it was time to put it out "there" and see what happened.

I emailed two friends for suggestions of where to learn how to teach here in BA. One of the friends I emailed is planning to open a hot yoga center next April/May. The kind of place that doesn't exist here yet - big open space, lots of classes, juice bar, workshops. She didn't know of any formal teacher trainings in Argentina. but... she and her biz partner had selected the yoga method in the US they wanted at their center and planned to send 3 people to get trained. Was I interested? She thought I would be great. (we'd attended a yoga retreat weekend a few months ago together). Wow. Unexpected but delighted. We met for a coffee and agreed all around good idea.

The other email I sent was to my current yoga teacher. An american soon to marry an argentine. Cheryl has what argentines call "buena onda". She's got that special yoga vibe of joy, humility, kindness and total calm. The type of person you want to be around all the time so that some of what that is will rub off on you somehow. She approached me after class that week and made an observation and two startling proposals. First she said, yes, you have a beautiful practice and are ready to teach. Second - did I want to learn from her in the Master/Apprentice style "old school" the way she learned from an Indian yogini - meeting privately outside of class, then assisting her in the classes with alignment etc. And, finally, if so, did I want to start teaching her classes in January when she takes off for two months for her honeymoon. Obviously the answer was yes and YES!

So, in the span of a week, I asked the universe for help and Aladdin's genie slithered out. All I had to do was put aside fear and nerves and step in to what I had created. This is the 3rd week of studying the ashtanga primary series with my yogi teacher, also taking 4 classes a week (two with Cheryl and two at an ashtanga studio with spanish speaking teachers only so I can absorb the vocab) Starting January until March I will teach Cheryl's Tuesday and Friday classes. In June, I'll spend a month long intensive in Ft Lauderdale learning a hot ashtanga method that I'll teach in BA when I return. Goodbye myofascial, hello namaste.