My Return to School

It's not that you can't teach an old dog a new trick.  It's that this old dog is having a hard time relaxing into the new world order, regardless of how much I want to.  I have signed on for this wonderful, whole semester, comprehensive class to become the next fully trained, compassionate, inspiring and motivating yoga teacher and I am having some serious issues with finding the time to do all the things involved with going to school.  Of all the problems to have this is a good one.  I fully appreciate my 'dilemma'.


I don't know if y'all remember but when one is in school it is good to crack open a book before class, preferably for longer than twenty minutes at a shot.  Once the book is cracked it is good to read it.  And maybe even read with comprehension.  These books may not be great luminaries of literature - but I do enjoy losing myself in the reading. Blocking out the time necessary to 'get lost' in this information has gotten squashed repeatedly.


It is also good to take notes when one is in school - to write down what one has read as another way to assimilate the information.  It is good to have flash cards, or make them, and then actually flash ones' self.  (I just like the thought of flashing anything.  What a fun idea.)  It is good to physically practice the sequences and moves one is training for - maybe for longer than twenty minutes.  I see on the syllabus that for a Yoga teaching certificate daily meditation is required.  I don't mind any of this.  How marvelous it would be to meditate twice a day. Wait - it's a requirement.


I love the reading, and the new information.  I love the feeling of immersion into something that has held my attention for over thirty-five years.  The flash cards, the meditations, the asana sequences are all so much fun.  WHY CAN'T I FIND MORE TIME FOR THE THINGS I WANT TO DO??!


I calculated the time spent studying this week.  It was a lousy seven and a half hours.  Pitiful, downright pitiful amount of time for something that interests me so much.  I missed two days completely .  Am I too stringent of a student?  Apparently not.


This last week instead of studying I was fixing dinner and then cleaning up from dinner.  I was folding clothes or grocery shopping. And when the weekend came around and I was out on the boat crabbing - with a boatload of friends.  And then the boat needed cleaning and putting away.  And the crab needed cleaning and putting away.  And or course the green beans came in.  They had to be canned before they went bad.  And all of these things are good.  All of these things are necessary.  I am just finding that it is really hard to go to school, dont'cha know.  Thank goodness there's another week before our first class.  These are all the early assignments given out at orientation.


My best study time all week was Sunday morning in the wee (very wee) hours at midnight thirty.  That study session lasted two and a half hours.  It was magic.  The house was quiet.  The fluorescent lights in the kitchen come on softly until they warm up.  There are no phone calls, no need to make any.  The information flowed into me and I soaked it in surrounded in the quiet ticking of the wall clock.  In the still of the night is the very best time to study.

Late night studying