I am kind to myself and others, I am enough.

It's been interesting to watch myself as I journey from a recent teacher-trainee graduate, to a full-fledged yoga instructor. Right after completion of my training, I was so eager to start teaching right away. Full of new energy and excitement for the task, I could not wait to schedule a full roster of classes at the studios I had been practicing in for the past several years. 

However, life soon got in the way, and I found myself frustrated that it was not happening more quickly. I felt like I was stagnating; what was holding me back? Was it my own inability to follow through with anything (feelings of inadequacy) or was it that there weren't enough students to go around (scarcity complex) or was it simply that no one wanted to hire me as a teacher (inadequacy again)? 

In reality it was none of those things, but it's easy to get caught up in all of those whirlings of "I'm not good enough" when you are waiting for the phone to ring, or waiting to have enough money to finally become registered with Yoga Alliance or waiting to be able to become insured (there's that pesky lack of money again.)   I have long struggled with an ability to live on a budget, and now I am working hard to make sure that I budget those things that are important to me, so that I can pay for the things that I want, and need, to achieve my personal goals.

In my personal practice, I have learned that asana "calms the whirlings of the mind" which can lead us into these negative thought patterns. Yoga chitta vritti nirodha is the 1st sutra from Patanjali, which roughly translates to the above quote. I learned this translation, my favorite that I have heard thus far, from a guest teacher who came to our last week of training to teach us proper pronounciation of Sanskrit words. On her shirt was printed the sutra written in Sanskrit text, and someone raised their hand during question time and asked her what her shirt said. I quickly jotted down the translation in my notes, as it resonated so deeply in my soul. Yoga does calm the whirlings of my mind.

And so, today, as I am simultaneously nervous and excited and stressed about teaching my first "official" class, I remind myself to calm the whirlings, and listen to my inner wisdom, that which affirms for me that I am good enough, and they will indeed like me, and I won't forget what to say, or the names of the asanas, and if I should, then I can laugh it off. No one expects their yoga teachers to be super-human. I have to remind myself this as I journey into this new part of my life. I will never reach perfection, as my beloved counselor used to remind me to tell myself, but I am perfect just as I am.

I am enough.

As I write those words, I cannot help but link to the blog of the "I am enough collaborative." This a project that was started by a woman named Tracy Clark, and a number of her writerly/artist friends. Each of the women has blogged in this project about the words they feel they most need to hear. It's powerful stuff. The particular essay I linked to is one that I related so stongly to that I wanted to quote the entire thing here. But since I cannot, I will quote her last paragraph, which includes an excerpt of a  beautiful poem from Mary Oliver.

She says, "Yes, I may be rambling and I may be tired, but writing enlivens me and helps me feel more coherent. I hope my sharing from an unstuck place will still encourage you to ramble too, without apology. The last few stanzas especially of the Mary Oliver poem, 'Starlings in Winter,' say it well:

I am thinking now

of greif, and getting past it;

I feel my boots

trying to leave the ground,

I feel my heart

pumping hard, I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.

I want to belight and frolicsome.

I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,

as though I had wings.