August 2013 – The Bliss Project

Ever have one of those days where you wake up thinking everything will be awesome, and then it isn’t? Yeah. Not fun.

I got up early yesterday morning (9 am is early when you’re on holidays) to go to yoga. A road was closed, so I had to detour. The detour was so long and far away from where I wanted to go that I not only missed my class, I got lost and it took an hour, a closed bridge and another closed road before I made it back home.

Determined not to let this ruin my day, I decided to head out to Pink Lake to take some fun yoga shots. I asked my cousin Annie, who is a photographer, to take some yoga pictures of me, so I thought I’d practice a little.

Last time I took yoga pictures, I hid from people, so they wouln’t see what I was doing. I started off the same way, on a small trail away from the lake, in the only patch of sunlight I could find.

Does this sunlight make my butt look weird?

Half-moon pose. Not the disaster part yet.

I wasn’t really satisfied with this location, so I headed for the lake, thinking if people saw me, so what.

Sun warrior in the sun.

Upward dog by some trees. I waited until there were no kids around so I wouldn’t set a bad example.

This looks like a slightly more dangerous version of upward dog on a railing, but the water was there in the previous picture, you just can’t see it.

So far, everything was great. Then I came to this spot.

Something terrible is about to happen here.

I set up my camera, hit the timer and went into half-moon pose. This time, I grabbed for my left foot with my left hand, a variation I’ve done before. The worst thing that usually happens is that I lose my balance and fall down. My balance was ok, but as I held my foot, I felt something move, and not in a good way. It felt as though two muscles were pulling away from each other, but I’m thinking it was just one muscle and it wasn’t happy.

This is the picture I got.

See me reaching for my right glute? Not fun, not fun at all.

Here is a more detailed photo of my injury.

Talk about pain in the butt.

It wasn’t terrible at the time, it just felt kind of weird, so I took a few more photos. I didn’t attempt half-moon again though.

Crescent lunge.

I didn’t dare go into the full expression of camel pose because I didn’t know how my butt would take it.

A little side crow fun stuff.

And that was it. I came home, sat on an ice pack, then spent the next few hours glued to my couch watching Doctor Who. Today, I have to go outside and talk to people, so I’m going to take some advil and hope for the best.

The worst thing about this whole disaster is that I can’t practice yoga for a little while. The horror!! Remember kids, half-moon has hidden dangers. Be aware!

Before I started my yoga teacher training, I thought I would be writing about it almost every day and sharing all the new stuff I discovered.

It didn’t really work that way.

I learned so much about myself and my practice, but it was such an intense process, I didn’t have time to figure it out. Half the time, I didn’t understand what I was feeling, learning and experiencing. There was no way I could seperate it all into neat little blog posts.

People ask how yoga teacher training was. I don’t know how to answer. I wasn’t just one thing. It was everything. My life, my practice, my goals, my emotions, they’re all connected and I can’t pull out one thing and say it was good, or it was bad.

I do know how I feel now. I feel limitless. I can do anything and be anything.

Also, I know that I want to teach yoga from a place of love and joy. That’s what I have to share with the world.

Here’s a little look at my journey.