So today starts the correspondence portion of our Mindfulness Yoga Teacher Training. Our training consisted of two really intense weekends of meditation, lecture and asana practice. The next six months we'll be journaling our daily meditation practices, asana practices, and whatever else the lovely Frank Jude Boccio gives us for our correspondence course. This month in addition to our journaling, we have an essay to write as well, which I will probably publish here too :) I'm looking forward to this journey and developing new practices and mindful ways of living. I'm also looking forward to incorporating more mindfulness into my yoga classes, so it's going to be interesting to see how I grow and develop as a teacher!

So this week, we're to focus on labeling our inhales and exhales as we sit: belly rising, belly falling for three days, and then drawing awareness to the nostrils: in breath, out breath.

This morning I sat for fifteen minutes before attending an hour long yoga class. It was interesting sitting and meditating in a hot room; but I also didn't find myself very distracted by things that might normally distract me during a meditation: my foot falling asleep, students unrolling mats and getting themselves situated in the practice room, sweat dripping down my face and back. I was really intently focusing on labeling the inhales and exhales. I think now its almost comical and I'm wondering if I even really relaxed into meditation since I was focusing so hard on those two words! Towards the end of the fifteen minutes, I wasn't doing much labeling of breathing, but was focused on my breath and how it changed from deep to shallow inhales. I started to anticipate the class a little bit and was wondering when it was going to start. Each time I caught myself doing that I went back to labeling the rising and falling. Good times.