If your last four months have been anything like mine, then I hope that you have passed through the fire of transformation and see and feel the value of all life’s lessons.  I am at the airport in Mallorca en route to Morocco and realize that trying to capture the events of the last few weeks here in a blog post is like trying to describe a yoga pose with words

As usual, I have been growing in several neatly organized areas so to make it easier to review….personal growth of body and heart, professional growth as a teacher and spiritual growth as a light being.

In my personal life, Mallorca has entrusted me with a very powerful dose of ‘what do you want?!?’  Within the last several months here, I have been exploring a magical romantic relationship with a woman who has established roots and personal / familial needs that will keep her here on the island while I continue on my pre-arranged path of teaching globally over the next year.  I am very called to continue on with my life’s purpose and path and also realize that I am being asked to step into a higher place of awareness of my heart’s desires in relationship to my mind and spirit’s desires to be a unifying force of global yogic consciousness.  All my life, I have been a firm believer that I can have everything I want and have been asked a lot lately to make decisions between multiple amazing choices.  So as I explore deeper into my personal desires for a partner and how she meets me in the ‘real world’ of the life I have created for myself… I am again being asked to trust in the divine timing of things.  So with a deep exhale I am leaving Mallorca with a new openness, a new feeling of connection and gratitude and a new trust that time will reveal the path to take.   And in the meantime, there are plans to re-connect very soon    In other non-romantic areas of my personal life, I feel a great connection to many people here…and I realize that most of the people I met came, quite obviously, through Yoga.  I think a part of this was my lack of desire to ‘go out,’ which I miss in many senses (and am totally cool with in others).  Smoking is still happening in all the clubs, bars and even restaurants here and it disgusts me.  So being out in a social place is a ‘nischt nischt’ (have you seen Bruno, the ‘new’ Borat?) for those that like to breathe clean air.  Plus, the music in the clubs is crap (in my humble opinion!).  These two things combined made  me really miss the magic of the San Francisco Bay Area.  There are so many awakened places and gathering that create a positive vibration for dancing, socializing and playing.  I keep in touch with facebook and email lists and know the kind of conscious gatherings that are happening there and feel that where ever it is that I make some roots of my own, I will seek out the right people to create events.

And in fact, as my final days drew near, I created a Good bye party and had it catered, set up live music and invited students and friends.  The room at YogaYou is really beautiful (although could use some plants!) and having a party there felt great.  My conscious eccentric friend, Shanti, helped with some live electric violin and very nice guitar and the ambience was really festive.  I was pretty exhausted after a whirlwind several days so my energy was a bit low and many people were way for the holidays already, but the party was a great success on many levels.  The people that were there all were satisfied with the food, music and company and I truly hope that YogaYou will find someway / someone to keep this spirit alive.

Professionally, this teaching residency has been A LOT to absorb.  The last few weeks have brought me to a place of Yogi Burnout.  Sad, but true…I have been teaching 11 classes a week at a studio that has been challenging for me to feel totally connected to.  I have loved all the teaching but lost my desire when it became unpleasant to even walk in the door not knowing what new surprise would welcome me.  There were some personal conflicts that killed any hope for positive communication at the ‘first line’ of communication and I felt all the communication was one way, more being told what would happen instead of dialog to discuss options and get personal feelings on matters.  From the top level, there are good intentions to share Yoga with the world, but due to financial concerns and a strong monetary focus, the ‘yoga’ took a back seat and a sense of coldness was apparent.  Not just with the Yoga room, which was in fact really cold at times (like wearing long underwear and a hat while teaching) but energetically.  In a final meeting with one of the owners, I finally received some gratitude for ‘carrying the yogic spirit’ during my tenure which was a time of great transition.  I think there is great potential for the place and as with a Yoga practice, must be built with a solid foundation and sometimes re-constructed.  I hope this time of growth and reconstruction will lead them through and the next visiting teacher is able to bring heart, love and community to a place that is really hungry for it.  I made some very positive headway with this by organizing weekly AcroYoga jams and organizing Kirtans which felt like adrenaline boosts to the spiritual morale of the students.  The AcroYoga will carry on as there are some wonderful light beings willing to take the action steps to keep it up….as for Kirtan, they need a wallah!!  Any readers ready to go to Mallorca for a bit?!?

I also fully accept my personal role in the burnout as I had organized workshops all around Europe almost every weekend, continued to be my own personal tour manager and am planning 2009 details on 4 continents, was energetically focused on filling my New Years retreat and my now sold out teacher training program and creating the manual for the teacher training program.  These are things that I normally am able to juggle, but without the full teaching schedule and above mentioned energetic drains.  This burnout resulted in a decline of my personal practice time and I found myself just practicing with the class as my yoga practice many times in the last weeks.  My body can feel it, my mind can feel it and I am looking forward to a week on my own in Marrakech with a hotel room to honor my practice daily before exploring the sensory explosion that Marrakech will be!

Regarding the teacher training, much of my non-teaching time over the last few weeks has been devoted to finishing the manual and doing all the enrollment on my own.  I had anticipated stopping with 24 students but now have 27 as I accepted 3 men at the end to help with gender balance.  I know it will be a lot to have 27 students, but there are other teachers coming in to support me and I also feel that I up for it.  I do not have any classes scheduled to teach at all in January, which is a bit weird but I’m OK with it, and I will be coming to Brasil rested and ready.  The group is a very global (7 countries) group with a wide range of yogic and life experience.  It’s going to be great!

OK…landing now in Marrakech…I will post this ASAP and finish more soon.
Light and Love,
David