The Paradox of Giving/Receiving

I am exhausted.  (Disclaimer: I am not complaining ... I'm stating facts.)

I'm in the middle of my last week here in Utah with my hefty goal of becoming certified as a yoga teacher by the end of the summer hovering over me.  (Yoga teacher trainees at Bodhi Yoga are given 18 months to finish all of the requirements to become certified to teach ... and I'm three days away from finishing my certification requirements in 2 months.)  I've been squeezing yoga into every nook and cranny of my life possible. 

And now that it's the final week, any and all procrastination that occurred earlier in the summer must be taken care of now.  Today I taught from 8:30-10:00am, then did personal practice for an hour, then taught three more classes from 3:00-9:00pm, and then worked on my yoga blog.  Tomorrow I'll attend class from 8:30-10:00am, then participate in a special yoga video recording that Syl is doing from 10:00am-12:30pm, then do an hour and a half of personal yoga practice, study anatomy for an hour and a half, and write more blogs.  And so it goes until Saturday.  I'm saturated in yoga.  And I really am exhausted because yoga is physically intensive.

BUT (note the caps to emphasize my point), surprisingly, even though I'm exhausted and doing yoga from dawn until dusk (actually past dusk), I feel totally content, happy, motivated, directed, purposeful, and fulfilled.  Most jobs or work that I do all day long flat out tire me (including my mood).  Yet yoga, as intense as it is, just keeps giving back to me.  Despite my sometimes loss of physical and emotional steam this week, I feel really excited to be involved in something that is so personally fulfilling in both my own practice, and especially in sharing with others the things I'm learning.  I LOVE teaching yoga.  And although I'll be relieved when my certification requirements are done and I can just practice yoga at a more "normal" pace, I'm so totally okay with giving every ounce I have in me for now.  My past year of grad school never had me feeling this rejuvenated despite the exhaustion.  Yoga is unique in that it fills the cup even while it's being emptied.  I give and empty my cup, only to look down and see my cup full again.  At least that's how it is for me.  Awesome.  Final stretch ... hang in there ... whatever your final stretch is about, you can do it!

(Note: This entry was written at 4am when I would have thought my body would be recuperating from all the yoga, but, to my dismay, is wide awake thinking about things I want to blog about.  Forgive any nonsensical writing... :)).

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