Om

An om that I made for my yoga teacher training program with Rolf Gates, Adobe Photoshop.

    In less than 4 weeks I will graduate from my year long, 200 hour yoga teacher training program with Rolf Gates.  It has been a transformative class with thought provoking lectures, a wonderful reading list, and a great local yoga community.  The om I created will be for our class graduation t-shirt.  It is composed of some of the most significant phrases from our class.  To the 40 of us students, it calls to mind many important principles of teaching yoga, perhaps most important, that, "We want our students to be successful."  It is a beautiful goal to enter a classroom with.  I believe that by incorporating these details from the class on our shirt, that it will help us retain the things that we want to embody most as yoga instructors.  Rolf speaks often about finding skillful ways to move in a yoga practice, and to be as a teacher and in life.  I hope I have achieved that in creating a shirt that is both aesthetically pleasing, and mentally/spiritually significant.
     My favorite quote from Rolf is the following:

“We show up, burn brightly, live passionately, hold nothing back, and when the moment is over, when our work is done, we step back and let go.” -Rolf Gates 

         I think that this is a beautiful way to complete my posts for the month of February.  It is about love for others, and love for the self.  When we practice, we often begin or close with a meta meditation, expressing love for all beings.  

"May all beings be safe, may all beings be happy, may all beings be healthy, may all beings be free." -a meta meditation

          Namaste (the light and best in me honors the light and best in each of you), Heidi