Yoga

Yoga teacher training has started!

Collaboration with HIMA Happiness

My yoga teacher course started a couple of weeks ago, here are my feelings from the first weekend.

The weekends are held at HIMA's facilities in Ullanlinna and we started on a Friday afternoon. I didn't get there until just before the start, the others had already had tea and a chance to chat a little. We started getting to know each by giving a neck and shoulder massage to the person sitting next to us, and that's when I got that "oh no, what have I gotten myself into" feeling, I was really out of my comfort zone. Among space scientists, it wouldn't be unusual if after a couple of years I only knew a colleague's and her dog's name, we don't exactly get to know each other by giving each other massages. However, I'm the kind of person who gets bored easily and I love the feeling of doing something completely new and different, so on the other hand, the situation was also quite fascinating for me. Here I am doing something completely different than I would normally do. In the end, getting to know each other this way was not a negative experience at all, instead it gave me an even more expectant feeling about the weekend. 

We did a light yoga exercise, got to know each other a bit more and heard about the year's program, then it was already time to head back home to sleep as we would be continuing early on Saturday morning. 

On Saturday we got down to business when we received thick Asana manuals. With the manual we started going through the sun salutation one asana at a time. I really liked the precision and care with which each asana was handled, it has been really educational and interesting. During Saturday, I also got to talk to people more and everyone has seemed really nice. It's nice to have people of different ages and backgrounds in the group. We finished in the late afternoon on Saturday which was nice as I then had time to hang out with Jordan before his bedtime. 

On Sunday we started early in the morning as well and continued with yoga exercises and the asana manual as on Saturday. We also did teaching exercises during the first weekend. We practiced teaching each other the asanas we had just carefully studied and we also learned how to assist with the asanas. In addition to that, we started the Ayurveda part of the HIMA seasons training. I'm the type of person who only believes in what can be scientifically proven, but I found it fascinating to hear about Ayurveda from that perspective. It's believed, for example, that digestion tells a lot about a person's health, and nowadays intestinal bacteria have been found to affect everything from depression to obesity. I feel that old religions and beliefs often contain some wise insights that can be used even today. After all, they have once represented the best understanding of law, medicine, morality, or all of them, and the information was collected over hundreds of years.

I was left with a really good feeling after the weekend and I'm now even more inspired by the course and am already looking forward to the next weekend at the end of May. 

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