Graduating Tomorrow

We graduate tomorrow. I can't believe that I am less than 12 hours away from being a certified yoga instructor! That makes me so giddy and happy and I think I'm as excited about this as I was about graduating from college. It feels like such a huge accomplishment that was years in the making and I'm optimistic about what lies ahead.

There are many things I will miss about being here in Bali. There were so many restaurants I was going to try and shops I was going to browse but somehow I didn't find time to do everything I wanted to. Time flies when you're in class 12 hours a day.

I'll miss the carefree feeling of walking to school or to some restaurant with my friends, especially my friend from Switzerland. I'll miss the deep conversations and even the shallow conversations about life, philosophy, Sanskrit, chakras, the mula bandha, karma, raw food vs. ayurvedic nutrition and how we feel in certain postures, among many other things. I'll miss looking at the beautiful rice fields every day. I'll miss the little geckos on all the walls. I'll miss going to breakfast every morning with my friends who are staying at the same hotel. Even though by the time breakfast rolls around we're usually so tired from our morning asana practice that we collapse in a heap on the breakfast benches, it's nice to have that familiarity and companionship. I'll miss being in such a supportive environment where it's ok to burst into tears in the middle of class for a reason that's explainable only to you but which everyone understands. Or to stifle laughter in the middle of class when the drill seargent-esque instructor yelled at someone for squishing an ant on her mat. I'll miss the break times when I'd go to a space by myself to practice a challenging posture only to have someone come up to me and help guide me through and and tell me I am going to get there soon. I'll miss being in a room full of people from all different places around the world who all understand each other so well because we know we are one.

There are some things I won't miss. Springing out of bed at 5:30 am, six days a week tops that list. Actually it went from springing (week 1) to plodding (week 2) to dragging (week 3) to flopping (week 4). I also won't miss sitting on the floor all day, or the unnecessary drama that has polluted our group this past week. (Yes, even yogis have issues. Or, as the joke goes, yogis have the most issues out of anyone and that's why we do yoga.) I won't miss the salamanders. I won't miss having to brush my teeth with bottled water. And on that note, I would kill (ok, maybe not kill, unless it was an ant) for a soak in a nice hot bath. It's liberating to wear yoga pants and no makeup every day, but it would be nice to not have my pants stuck to me with sweat by 8:00 am and remain that way for the rest of the day, and to be able to put on just a little makeup in the evening without it dripping off in 5 minutes.

My heart and my head are so full of the many lessons I've learned here. This training has been one of the highlights of my life.