Midterm Exam + Yoga History ~ Day 10 of Yoga Teacher Training

The midterm exam went really well. I only blanked out on two questions during the exam! It had been so long since I had to study and take any kind of written exam, so this was unusual and a bit stressful. I was hoping to do better but last week was also personally difficult. I’m reminding myself to be gentle...and I still did get a decent mark above 80!

On this tenth day of yoga teacher training, we studied yoga history, the branches of yoga and so much more. We did an interesting, a little bit interactive, introduction study of yoga history, with visuals and music. For example, during one part of yoga history, the Upanishadic (Post-Vedic) age, the practice of yoga involved renouncing everything and meditating in the mountain caves. Each of us took a little candle, found an isolated corner of the study and practiced a little meditation. I thought it was great to learn this way and just like almost every week, I know I want to dive deeper into that topic.

We learned about the Branches of Yoga and Patanjali's 8 Limbs (Tree of Yoga). We talked about the Bhagavad Gita and our teacher invited us to pick a card from this deck.

Our focus this week is noticing the discipline of ahimsa {non-violence} , noticing when we might struggle with it through thoughts, speech, actions. We are invited to write about those moments, paying attention to the timing and our actual thoughts. We will focus on one Yama a week.

We had another great turn out for the Yoga for Charity public class and I observed it this week, writing notes on the other yoga teachers in training. It's quite different to be in that role as oppose to participating in the class. I enjoyed it and learned a lot!

There is so much I want to continue learning. I wish I had more time during the week to read! Still, I am very grateful to have this experience and the starting point to this life long learning journey.