Discipline

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Hmm so here's the juggernaut. Confidence is required to practice, and furthermore, to teach. There is no one, not even when you have a history of performance and public speaking who is not confronted when intensely developing their yoga practice and certainly when they teach. How can we harness this desire to do well, with confidence, ease and authenticity? To cultivate contentment, we can foster the following attitudes and practices: - Adikara: doing the work to make yourself whole, doing the work to be ready (preparation) - Interconnectedness - lose the ego, don't define yourself as separate from others and your environment (we are brought into existence by our community) - Heritage: Knowing and embracing your history and roots - Embodiment: 'fake it til you make it' This weekend we will be looking at the history of yoga, the energetic body, kundalini shakti, the elements and sankhya philosophy, physiology and teaching beginners.

' Tat tvam asi '; ' you are that.' ~ Chandogya Upanishad. Whether you signed up for it or not, yoga inevitably leads us all to a place of self enquiry: how am I and who am I? The meditational and physical aspects of the practice seduce you down a often soon to be confronting path of attaching to aspects of yourself, and then being forced to cultivate detachment. You are asked to (attach) strengthen your body, strive for a pose... but then realise you are not the pose, the pose may not remain, and it doesn't deliver lasting contentment (detachment). You may (attach) skilfully learn to observe the mind and your mental tendencies (ie character traits) in meditation... only to see them pass and change or evolve (detachment). This weekend on TTC you will be in the skilful hands of Markus Veda, for an empowering and challenging exploration of inversions. Inversions are most people's fear poses, and fear and limiting self beliefs are things we want to bust on teacher training! Olivia Marley will take you through shoulder and upper limb anatomy. And with me, you will look at the nervous system and the interpretation of the mind's aspects and functions according to the yoga tradition. We will look at a few important stories from the Upanishads on seeking the 'true self' and transformation. Who is the self that you enter the practice with now? Who is the self that desires something other? What is the self that you are striving towards? If the self is the self, who is the other? What notions of self do you want to live by, what notions of self do you stand in when you teach?