dear readers,
I am writing from a magnificent hilltop home overlooking the Bay of Palma de Mallorca as the sun is setting, boats are floating, dogs are barking and the Summer here in beginning to wind down. I arrived on the island on Wednesday after successfully completeing the Acro Yoga teacher training on Sunday (photos are up!).
The last week of the training was truly potenizing on all levels. I learned some incredible new Jedi Acro Yoga skills (star, turntable, side star and several of their acrobatic flows that rock!), was shown my psychological dark and scary places very clearly (sharing the ‘teaching stage’, only speaking necessary contributions, opening to deeper levels of communication) and all the while found a deepening connection to the divine force of the universe through a very supportive, conscious and loving community of people.
With the help of my teacher/coach/friend Jason, I was able to jump to handstand without the wall and hold it for about 10 breaths! This was maybe the 3rd time in my life doing it, and I am convinced that the conditioning and training we were doing, in combination with the insighful eye of Jason, gave me the inner power and confidence to do it. This was one of my personal goals for the training and it felt amazing to get it! The group had a number of super hand-standers that were great inspiration and it was good for me to watch them every day and build the desire to stick it. I also learned a lot from them about basing Acro Yoga and I am stoked to work on the new tricks here in Mallorca. I have a flier ready to go and we will meet next week to start our training 
The last week of the training also had us team practice teaching and I was really faced with my own control issues again as part of the exercise was to cultivate equal voice among the teachers and to play on each of our areas for deepest growth. We met 3 times and had some very intentional communication combined with fears, doubts, support and fun. What an experience! Thanks to the NorCal team for being patient with me, reflecting honstly and ultimately ROCKING THE HOUSE with our class!
During the class, I was also faced with a dark and scary spot in me as part of the exercise had the ‘students’ of the class (our TT classmates and teachers) behaving like 8 year olds. This was our training on how to deal with rowdy classes and it was really tough. At one point, one of my friends was truly playing the part of the ‘I’m not listening and I’m doing what I want” student and I lost it…. I could not tell the difference between the exercise and reality. My heart was racing, I didn’t know what to do and have never in my 8 years of teaching encountered such a student. After ‘lets take a deep breath’, ‘do you remember the teaching example?’, ‘would you try it slower’….I finally said “OK, if you want to fall, then fall….” and walked away in disgust. The rest of the class, he continued to play the part and shot eye daggers, pouted and energetically disturbed the whole class. It was really confronting. In our post class processing, I was still nervous and admitted what happened and how I lost my cool. The coaching from the teaching staff offered me some insight how to handle it in the future (walk hiim out of the room and have a ‘can you help me out conversation?) but even still, it will be rather confronting if I ever have a student like that. Thanks Jean-Jacques for the advance training
Our crew of trainees (now official teachers!) finished the week with lots of break-downs leading to break-throughs and a great deal of comunity support for one another. This was an underlying theme of the whole training ands the Kula (community) we built feels very strong. I am stoked to co-teach Acro Yoga with many of them and know that the foundational work we craeted in the 3 weeks will help us all in our development as teachers.
I’m not sure if I mentioned it in the last post or not, but we came up with a group mission statement and then created a song for it. It’s a catchy one and we sang it lots! And as we’re in the modern age, we recorded a few versions as well….here’s the hippie’s on the hill variation! Enjoy:
We, Acro Yogi’s, create Consicous Loving Community with Trust and Playfulness through Healing Movement, Radical Self Acceptance and Metta, MATE!.
The final night of the training was Full Moon and a group of us stayed out on the Gymnastics mats all night being bathed by moonlight and enjoying each others company one last night. It was really sweet….and our closing circle was a pool of tears and acknowledgments and love. I learned a great deal about group dynamics, exercises and practices that I am very excited to share in my trainings, workshops and LIFE!
I had one night in LA after the training and the following morning made my final runs to Whole Foods, etc for all the organic body care and tools I can’t get here in Spain and off I went…. 11 hours later waking in London, connecting to Amsterdam for a night at Nicki’s! And have arrive on Mallorca feeling stoked and alive. I have a partner workshop tomorrow with a theme of Trust of Playfulness! and the teaching residency starts on Monday. I have a sweet apartment overlooking the Bay, a sense of goundedness to be in one place for a few months and an excited feeling with the monsterous To Do list I have in front of me….perhaps I’ll take a moment and shift that second word to what we worked with in the training and make the rest of the evening about me TO BE list!
I am being trusting, playful, loving and open! Jai Ma!
