Last weekend I graduated from yoga teacher training.  That's it.  I'm on my own now.  I've got my class starting in two weeks, and I'm really looking forward to teaching it.  I've been substituting when other teachers are sick or on vacation, so I've been getting some practice.  I really like teaching.  I feel great after a class.  The energy I get from the students is amazing.  I want more.

So now I am looking for something new to learn.  I want something that will complement the yoga.  I've been considering a course in Ayurveda, so I can be more holistic in helping my yoga students.  I've found a place that does distance learning, but it's only an hour away so I can go there if I need to.  Just waiting for some additional information to arrive in the mail, then I think I will be on to the next thing.

I am also trying to take my personal yoga practice to another level.  I've been working on arm balances - handstands, peacock, scorpion, dragonfly - and I'm going to do some work with an Iyengar teacher to see if we can fix my forward folds.  There is always something else to work on.

There's something I need to know.  Maybe the other writers here can help me.  Do you have stories in your head all the time?  Are there dialogs between fictional characters playing in the back of your mind while you are trying to do other things?  Do you drive in the car trying to think of the perfect words to describe what you're wearing, or what you would be wearing if you were as stylish as you are in your fantasies?  I was just wondering if this is something that happens to people when they write, or if I should consider some medication, because these stories get awfully distracting at times.

I've found that the only way to get the stories out of my head is to write them down.  As a result, there are days when I spend more time writing in my journal than I do working.  This is not necessarily a bad thing, for me, but eventually the people I work for are going to figure out that I am not getting anything productive done.  Getting fired doesn't worry me.  Once a couple of debts are paid, I am done there anyway.  (15 months, and counting.)  I just wonder if the stories are going to keep distracting me whenever I try to be productive.  I can deal with it, but I will have to start carrying a journal with me everywhere.  The stories are especially annoying when I'm on my yoga mat.  I can't write them down while I'm standing on my head.  Not yet, anyway.  Maybe with more practice.

I've been writing many stories lately.  Really, they are just scenes, pieces of stories, but maybe they will all fit together someday into that killer novel I'm going to write.  Meanwhile, I finally figured out what I'm going to do next.  I signed up for an online writing workshop.  I found it a year ago, but I put it on hold while I did yoga teacher training.  The training came with a heavy workload, so I'm glad I didn't try to do both at once, but now I am ready to try.  In the fall, if it still sounds interesting, I will tackle the Ayurveda course I was looking at.  In 2009, I am going to do a teacher training week for Baron Baptiste's power yoga.  By the end of 2009, I am going to retire and teach yoga, write, and spend more time with my kids.  It's a good plan. 

I was in the attic getting my summer clothes, because the weather here in the northeast has finally realized it's the middle of May.  I live in an old house, with closets designed for simpler times, so I have to rotate clothes when the seasons change.  I dragged down the short sleeved tops and cropped pants, and dragged up the wool pants and sweaters.  I needed to shift some of the boxes to make room for what I was putting up there, and I came across a bag that my mother had given me a couple of years ago when she was cleaning out and preparing to move.  I took a quick look.  On top was the photo album my mother had put together when I was a baby.  First steps, first haircut, first day of school, that sort of thing.  I had never looked further, but an album at the bottom of the bag caught my eye today.

I dug out my wedding album.  This was from my first wedding, when I was 21 years old.  It was a short marriage, so short that we were engaged longer than we were married.  It wasn't awful; it was just a case of marrying the wrong person when I was too young to know better.  I have no regrets of getting married, or of getting divorced. 

As I flipped through the album, I cringed.  What was I thinking?  Forget the fact that the groom wasn't the right man for me, my hair was awful.  I looked like a poodle.  In all fairness, it was the eighties.  My bridesmaids and I were having a contest to see who could have the biggest hair.  That is the only explanation for why we all had hair wider than our shoulders and taller than all the guys.  Mine was really bad, because it was made worse by a bad perm.  The top was curly.  The rest hung to my shoulders, with curls on the ends.  My mother had a poodle with the same haircut.  Again, what was I thinking?

I could go on about the teal dresses and pink flowers, the obscene amounts of lace on my dress, and the lame song we picked for our first dance, but I can't get past the bad hair.  Am I being superficial and shallow, regretting the wedding hair and not mourning the short-lived marriage that followed it?  Probably.  Am I worried about it?  Not at all.  I am finally at a place in my life where I can look back at my past and let it go.  I've already released the feelings around the marriage.  Now, after a brief period of self-loathing for my apparent lack of style twenty years ago, I release the poodle hair.  The past is over.  Life is good.

But I'm not posting any of those pictures.

Tomorrow night I teach my first yoga class at the community college.  I am almost ready.  My blankets, blocks, straps, and extra mats are packed.  I've got a playlist set up on my iPod, and my speaker dock is charging, just in case I can't find a convenient place to plug it in.  I've found a nice grounding meditation to start with, and a clever quote from Thoreau about heaven being under your feet.  I've got a sign for the door to remind the students to leave their shoes outside and to turn their cell phones off.  The college called to confirm, and to let me know I have eleven students, which is more than I expected.  All I have to do is finish packing up and put it all in the car.

Oh, and at some point I have to figure out what I'm going to teach. 

I have some idea of the poses I want to work on during the first class.  I want to focus on grounding, and setting up a strong foundation for the nine weeks to come.  And I can wing it if I need to.  We learned in yoga teacher training to have a theme, so the class has some structure, but to let the poses flow based on the energy in the room.  "Trust the guru to speak through you," our teacher told us when we were nervous about teaching without a plan.  I've had plenty of practice, both during teacher training and being asked to substitute teach at the last minute.  Not knowing what I want to teach shouldn't worry me, but my stomach is in a knot.

I guess I have to admit that I'm nervous.  I usually don't get nervous before teaching a class, but this time is different.  It is outside the studio where I did my teacher training, and away from the students I know.  The regulars at the studio are a very supportive bunch, and always had kind words after I taught a class.  They knew I was learning, and were right there with the positive feedback.  I appreciate the loving energy they brought to class.

Tomorrow I meet eleven people, and have to bring them the same energy the studio regulars brought me.  I have to get them to trust me.  I don't know what music they like, or what their limitations are, or how much yoga they know.  I have to find out, and I won't have my teacher standing in the wings to help me if I falter.  I have to trust myself, and the guru, to give them a good class. 

I'm sure once I'm through the first class, everything will be fine.  All I have to do is breathe in, and breathe out, and open my heart to these people who believe I can teach them yoga.  Piece of cake, right?

This is going to be a quick entry, because I'm exhausted.  I couldn't fall asleep last night, thinking about the yoga class I was going to teach.  Now it is over.  We had one minor setback, because campus security had forgotten to unlock the door.  I was 20 minutes early, and gave them a call.  The guy who answered the phone promised to send someone over.  15 minutes later I called again.  "Oops," he said.  "I forgot to send someone."  Yes, oops.  While I was waiting I got to meet my students, and found out only one had ever done yoga before.  I had a room full of beginners.  We were going to have to go slowly.

I think class went well.  An hour and a half goes very fast when every pose has to be explained and explored.  I didn't do half the poses I thought I would.  Afterward, they told me they liked it, and said "see you next week," which I took as a good sign they would be coming back.

So now I can relax.  The first class is over.  I warned the security guard that we would be here for 10 weeks, so he'd probably be over opening the door again.  I also invited him to join us for yoga, and he said "maybe I will."  My husband says that's because I was wearing a thong under my yoga pants.  (He has a thing for missing panty lines, so I don't know that I can trust his opinion.) 

I have a week to recover before my next class.  I have a week to plan what I will do next.  I have a week to enjoy what I accomplished tonight.  This is good.  Now, I am going to bed, right after I stand on my head.

We spent Memorial Day weekend at our cabin and, like every other time we've gone, I miss the mountain when we come home.  Actually, coming home isn't what we do.  I think we leave home behind, and come back to New Jersey.

Driving north, on the way there, the hills start to turn into mountains at just about the half-way point.  When I see the first one towering over the road, I feel a tremendous sense of release.  I feel the tension drain out of my body.  My breath gets deeper.  I am filled with peaceful anticipation of the weekend.  For me, the five hour ride to the cabin feels like the journey to paradise.  The paradise has too many mosquitoes this year, but it is still paradise.

There's something about that little town in the mountains that just slows me down.  Maybe I am just trying to conform to the pace of life there.  Nobody is in a hurry.  People linger over breakfast at the tiny diner, chatting with the waitresses and anyone who passes their table.  There are only two blocks of Main Street, so people can be in and out of every shop in an hour.  All the basics are there - groceries, pharmacy goods, supplies for hiking or fishing or boating.  People have all they need, or they make due without it.  (Except a yoga studio.  Doesn't every town need a yoga studio?)

Driving south has the opposite effect.  I start thinking about work, who has to be where over the next few days and how I am going to get all the places everyone needs to go without sitting in traffic.  I want to clean out my house, with a goal to live more simply, so I make a list in my head of what needs to be tackled and stress myself out trying to figure out when I'm going to squeeze that in.  Yes, living simply is creating stress.  I think I've missed the point.

I daydreamed about my mountain a number of times today.  I wish we could just stay there.  We are seriously thinking about it.  Maybe when I am done cleaning out the house, it will be in perfect shape to sell.  Maybe someday soon I can wake up every morning and breathe the mountain air and move slowly through my day.  That little mountain town needs a yoga studio, after all.