Lately it’s been a whole lotta yoga.

During 40 days — while I was high on endorphins, apparently — I signed up for the Teacher Assisting Program at our studio. It’s a 2 weekend program (24 hours of training total) where you learn how to assist all the basic poses in our style of yoga. It’s super tough, because you also have to do all the poses and get pulled and pushed into all the tough places the poses can go. Exhausting but illuminating. I attended it to grow and learn, I like making my practice better. It was yet another indicator that I still don’t really care to teach yoga (but I already knew that)  – but what I want is to be awesome at it ;) These trainings just help me get better. Plus, as usual with all my yogadvetures, I met some super great people. Plus, when you’re touching people in that way, it just helps you let go a little and relax around other people — you can even translate that into how you interact with anyone.

Right now I’m sore and exhausted! The downside to the extreme yoga is that it throws me off of my regular schedule. I haven’t been to my normal amount of classes due to just needing extra time and needing some recovery time. But, it was good.

Secondly, Mike is in the process of getting on the sub teaching list at our studio. It’s a huge big deal, and a really tough process, but he’s just checking off the requirements one by one. You have to go through the teacher assistant program, go through the mentorship program (which he’s doing now by assisting the intro yoga series two nights a week), go to Level I training, some other stuff, and go through a series of practice classes. His first class was last week and his second class was today. I attended both. I hate giving feedback in general, and it’s tough to give feedback (we call them “gems and opportunities,” by the way) to someone I know so very well. Today someone called it “wife-back.” And yet, I’m so good at nagging him about other things… ;)

He’s doing great. He’ll have another class scheduled soon — I’m glad he has a couple of weeks to marinate on it. I thought his class was excellent today — he thought it could have gone better, but it’s all just part of the experience. He’s like my dad in that he has a gift for teaching for sure. (My grandpa once said you either are a teacher or you aren’t.) Mike is, for sure. I’m glad he has a teaching outlet right now. He’s still just finding his feet. His bare feet, I guess… At least he has his wife to give him man pedicures if needed.

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Last week I spend four days in the Chicago area. I was visiting my friend Pauline — we were joined at the hip sophomore year of High School when we lived in Bloomington. And I haven’t spent a whole lot of time with her since then… I finally followed through on a visit to her house to meet her one-year-old daughter Amelia, and get to know her husband Nate a little better.

We had a great time, like no years had gone by (with the exception of college degrees, husbands, kids, dogs, etc…)

We spent a morning at the Science and Industry museum, another day running around downtown Naperville (including a paddleboat ride and some Red Mango), and had some fun at the Arboretum kids’ area. We also fit in a yoga class at a Baptiste studio run by a fellow level 1-er of mine (I think we converted another yogi…) and saw the Sex and the City Movie. A really fun visit!

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