Last year my mentor and friend asked me what I want to do with my career next, and I said, I’d really like to teach teachers. Honestly saying that out loud was hard for me. I felt undeserving and silly for even thinking I had something to offer and or the know how to make such a daydream become a reality. I had no idea how to even get started. It seems these days you need to be instagram famous or own a yoga studio in order to start a teacher training- of which I am neither. Total imposter syndrome was really holding me back from going after something I truly wanted. But it was absolutely a goal of mine, and once I spoke the words into the universe my truth was able to be recognized more clearly. So I made a plan. I told myself that I’d get my 500 hour certification completed, and by the time I've taught for 10 years it would be my time (at this point I’d only been teaching for 7). So, my seed had been planted for a long term plan.
Shortly after that conversation I bumped into a friend who had recently bought a yoga studio, she said she would love to offer a teacher training at her studio, but had zero time to plan one and asked me if i would plan it and we could co-teach it. ::Insert ecstatic jumping here:: I went home that afternoon and started writing an outline for what I would want to add to my own yoga handbook and how I would plan to teach it. I had all these ideas I wanted to share and couldn’t wait to get it out in a shareable context. I am pretty sure I fell asleep with my macbook open and fingers still on the keys that night. Even though I felt supercharged I still had to go to sleep eventually.
AND… I shit you not, I literally can not make this shit up, the very next day, at the studio I teach at, the owner said he wanted to offer the 200 hour teacher training to other teachers at the studio so he could put his efforts into planning a 300 hour training. ::insert more ecstatic jumping here:: Like, I actually felt electricity running through me. And through divine channeling, hard work, and 7 months of writing every single day for at least 2-4 hours -I wrote my very own book of yoga. A total of 8 chapters, 384 pages, all for these yoga teacher trainings that I had manifested into existence. I burned the midnight oil every single night, it is a level of focus that has felt the most like being in the flow. I had zero resistance towards it. Yet I was also incredibly unattached to it. At one point it dawned on me as fear poked its ugly head in that there was a possibility no one would sign up for the training. And all my hard work would be for what?! … but I shoved those feelings aside as soon as I acknowledged that ugly voice of self doubt and apprehension .
As I was doing all the research for this book a quote kept coming up for me and it really spoke to my soul. It comes from the Bhvagad Gita -
“Let not the fruit of action be your motive to action. Your business is with action alone, not with the fruit of action.”
This reminder kept me going. Over and over again. That action alone is what was keeping me present and clear headed, not what the outcome of this focused work would be. And to be honest, throughout this process there was a natural transformation in the way I teach, the way I speak, the way I hold myself in my beliefs. So even if the goal was to teach teachers, unknowingly I was teaching myself, I was fortifying what I hold true and necessary in this practice of yoga. I’ve felt the most spiritually connected than I ever have through this process.
It has been a little over a year since I started writing my handbook, I’ve since taught both of the two 200 hour yoga teacher trainings. I’ve created deep meaningful connections to 12 amazing souls and I couldn’t be happier that I get to call this my “job”.
So in short, It is important to remember that in order to make your dreams a reality, you need to speak it out loud, believe that you are worthy, and once the universe starts conspiring, get ready, because you don’t even know how amazing it will be. I’m so tired of playing small, aren’t you?
Hugs,
Emily