Dreaming & Waking

To-Go Garudasana
Originally uploaded by Blue Dragonfly Girl

Last night I had a dream so vivid that it took me a while after waking up to realize that it hadn't actually happened.

I was taking a class with all the young boys that I work with at my internship. Our teacher was the director of the fabulous Street Yoga program. (Last fall, some friends and I had the wonderful experience of participating in a training he put on and got to meet and learn from this great guy).

In my dream he spoke Portuguese fluently and beautifully. The kids were responding well. And it took me about half the class to realize that he was teaching us yoga.

I'm not sure what it had seemed like before, just something else. Something good, no doubt, but just an experience like I'd never had before. It took a long time to realize that what I was doing was already familiar to me.

"This is crow pose," I thought as he brought us into the posture, "This is yoga! And the kids love it! I love it too!"

Afterwards, putting my shoes back on I was filled with excitement about the possibilities of working with these kids.

When I woke up, I felt elated.

Once I got over the fact that it was just a dream, it seemed the message was a strong one. Before Samosa left we were having lots of conversations about my internship. I was anxious and stressed out, primarily because I'd missed so much time being sick. I was worried that I couldn't make all this lost time up, or that I would have to make it up in ways that weren't fulfilling to me, just scrambling to get the hours I needed for my degree. And then what would be the point? I wanted it to mean something. What if it didn't? What would I do? And on and on and on. Samosa did the best he could to comfort me in my spiraling thoughts on the matter. But really since it was all just conjecture on my part, I had to wait until I got healthy again and my pneumonia was gone, before anything at all could be done.

Today was to be my first day back at the internship. Finally!

And it seemed to me -- as I got ready for work this morning -- that this dream was saying that although not everything I'm doing right now seems obvious to me (i.e. doing yoga and not realizing it's yoga), it's all good stuff and it's all beneficial in ways I may not yet be able to appreciate or understand. I just gotta go with it and enjoy the journey. I've got to remember what my professors always said and "Trust the process."

Trust the process. And try and enjoy it too.

It was a good day. 

Yoga in Porto Alegre

Once I awaken from jet-lag induced sleep, finding a good yoga studio in Porto Alegre will be on the top of my list. I'm hoping to teach yoga to either the kids I'll be working with at my internship or my fellow co-workers. I'm going to need to immerse myself in the language of yoga in Portuguese because I only know the English translations of the Sanskrit words. And quite frankly, I haven't spent any time using my Portuguese trying to describe how to put your body into various unusual (or usual) positions.




However, after reading a friend's fabulous blog on her adventures with yoga in Nicaragua, I can't help but wonder what yoga will look like in Brazil. A quick yoga + Porto Alegre google search brings up such a plethora of overwhelming options, that it appears that whatever yoga I want will be available there, I just have to find it.

This may be a bit of a quest because finding the yoga (and instructors) that work for you can require some effort. For a long time I didn't like yoga because I was always comparing myself with everyone else and thinking that I should be doing the poses perfectly even if it was my first time trying them. Frankly, I felt kind of bored and didn't understand what all the fuss was about. Luckily, the same fabulous friend brought me to a wonderful yoga studio in Austin about a year ago and I was hooked from the start of my first class. The instructor created such a beautiful space for accepting myself where I was at, that I could finally shed some of my competitive type A nature and just "be" in the practice.

Really, it was love at first sight. And by first sight I mean the first time I realized what it was all about. By the summer I was enrolled in their 200-hour training so I could learn how to bring yoga into my clinical work as a future social worker. In the fall I was traveling to Boston with some amazing women for a Street Yoga training.




And so if I can bring yoga into my internship in Brazil, I will. But I'm thinking that this will first involve a quest to find out what yoga in Brazil has to teach me.