Since graduating from yoga teacher training at Langara College and trying to find yoga work, I struggle regularly with my “right” to teach yoga. What makes me any better than the zillions of other yoga teachers in Vancouver? I can’t even do a headstand or an arm balance, or even a full forward fold. (Damn you, tight hamstrings!)

My kind answer is that I don’t have to know everything. I just have to roll out my own mat every day, and then share what I really, truly know. And what I really, truly know is that yoga has given me moments of quiet, when my critical mind won’t shut up. It’s helped me clean my desk (better focus), pursue jobs (more self-confidence), open the mail (courage with difficult feelings), birth a baby at home (concentration, breathing, self-affirmation, strength, you name it!), stop arguing with my husband (letting go of ego) and help my child with anxiety (by modeling calm). Yoga, as my naturopath therapist once said, has been my way back into the world.

And that’s what I want to share with people if I can – just how yoga can help you live with yourself. (Even with tight hamstrings!)

I’ve pondered going back for more teacher training specific to mental health. But since I’m an education addict, its possible I’m just avoiding the real work of pounding the self-promotion pavement and improving my teaching skills with low/no pay experience.

So as a little taster, I’ve signed up for a 5-week series of Trauma-sensitive Yoga for Depression and Anxiety with Nicole Marcia of Fine Balance Yoga. Yoga has been so helpful already in helping me cope; perhaps with more specifics, I’ll able to aim my breath more directly at those inner demons. Then if it’s super great, and if I manage to get more basic teaching experience, then I’ll sign up for the teacher training.

That was the idea anyway…that it was all to help me plan better classes for the benefit of others. Instead, it’s a weekly unraveling of all the scattered self-criticisms and worries I’d managed to roll up neatly into a tidy ball. Aaargh. Back to my own work again!