Pictures

This is the inside f our minibar. A tick for every yoga class with did over the nine weeks. Shannan is one ahead because she did one make up class on a Saturday morning for forgetting to sign in on day.
Last day of study at the pool before graduation day, going over the postures again.
Saying goodbye to the room with a view....
Dylan and Lauren are rehearsing their song for the talent show.
The night of the talent show all the pressure was off, we got to smile and enjoy life.
You are looking at 2 certified Bikram Yoga Teachers, can you tell? The feeling is priceless. Shannan and I will part ways soon after this. I'll miss her.
Chris was there and it was incredible to see him and have my first drink with him. I'm a very cheap date....

Week 9

Party week my b..t this week sucked! There was only one reason to feel like this was party week and that was that it was our last week here. Bikram was here the whole week and determined to make this week count.

Honestly it was sheer hell. No more posture clinics but we had lectures till Friday afternoon and Indian movies till the bitter end. It was a bit sad. Monday night was 2am, Tuesday 5.45am, Wednesday 2.30am, Thursday 3am! On Thursday night Bikram lectured about the breathing exercise till about 1am and then told us he wanted us to see an episode we’ve seen before once more…. This turned in to us watching three episodes again with him and us returning to our rooms again at 3am. It almost felt like we were kids that he just put in front of the TV because it’s easy.

Friday was supposed to be a lot of fun because it was our ‘talent show’ that night. Unfortunately everybody was so wiped out that it was really hard to look forward to it. The day was just a normal day like any other. At this point we look like absolute zombies, the bags under our eyes are turning weird shades of grey.

The talent show was fun, this group is loaded with musical talent. Who would ever know! It was a blast and I really enjoyed it. Plus this was really the evening all of us knew that by tomorrow that time we’d all be official certified Bikram Yoga teachers.

Something was going on with Bikram on Friday night not sure what it was. He left the talent show after 20 minutes leaving his big orange chair empty in the front row. It made me feel so bad for the people performing because I know they wanted him to see their performance. I was sitting third row and could clearly see that the senior staff was not too sure how to handle his absence.

Graduation was long……
There were a ton of family members to support us. We all had to tell the staff how many guests we were expecting so they would have a clear headcount for the dinner that evening.
After the 4 hours ceremony everyone was kind of standing around waiting to hear where to go for food. Then one of the senior staff members took the stage and told all of us Bikram had a falling out with the hotel over the food and that we were all on our own.
Okay!?!!
As one of my group mates put it very nicely, ‘this is just the icing on the cake’. It was pretty sad.

Chris, my roommate and I were already sitting at the hotel bar when all this happened. It was a funny feeling to get buzzed from one beer! Chris and I were on our way out after that and had our own dinner plans already. It was so good to see him.

As I said, this week was hell. We did not receive any love and were treated like s..t. I have no idea what set all of this off and we’ll probably never find out but it was anticlimactic to say the least. I would be very surprised if the next training will take place in Palm Springs again. Bikram mentioned Vegas, he loves the nightlife. Hopefully it will take place there so he can go out at night and the next Teacher Trainees can get some sleep at night.

I have successfully completed TT Spring ’09 and feel pretty darn good about it. Like Bikram told us, ‘you are now; bullet proof, fire proof, stress proof all proof’ Yes I am I can feel it, nothing can get me down and I am determined to become a killer Bikram Yoga teacher and help my fellow teachers spread this yoga around the globe.
I am so excited!

Chris and I are in Santa Barbara right now and are enjoying long walks, endless dinners and beautiful sunsets together. It’s so awesome to have some time together and reconnect before I jump back into my place in the family. Tomorrow we’ll fly back to Germany and I’ll be reunited with the boys again, I can’t wait.

Do I miss TT? No I don’t and I am not sure I will. I’ve met some wonderful people whom I will stay in touch with. Of course I’ll miss the doubles in a big hot room with 321 people. That amount of energy is intoxicating and addicting. But ‘the process’ I won’t miss. This was everything but a vacation, this was really hard and because of that at the end incredibly rewarding.

Bikram Yoga is what this is all about. And if you love the yoga and want to become a Bikram Yoga Teacher this training is the only way. As long as you are determined to teach and become part of the Bikram family, go for it! When in doubt, makes sure you know for sure that this is what you want to do before you sign up. If the love and passion to teach are not strong enough you won’t last, I’ve seen it in the people that left the training and experienced first hand what kept me going.

To all my family, friends, followers of this blog I’d like to say thank you. Thank you for following my journey and thank you for sending me your love, support and happy thoughts, I got them all and used them all up.

Be happy!
Martyntje Kyle

Pictures

Here is a picture of the core staff members. Most of them have been here for the full 9 weeks. It's a great group of very passionate people.
Shannan and I are waiting for an other lecture to start. Can you tell I've had some late nights?
Our last shopping round before we pack up and leave this place. The hotel is behind the palm trees so we've happily used the shopping cards to help us to the other side.
Claudia from group 8. She's 34, Romanian and has lived in Japan for the past 7 years.
Shawn from Santa Cruz. The day after dialog ended, he is dancing by the pool. Shawn lost his job a couple of months before TT and came here fully prepared. He is teaching already and I hope to take his class one day.
Three Canadian guys chilling by the pool. That is about all I know about them but they looked so relaxed that I had to take a picture.

All 26 postures. Add two breathing exercises to that and you have a Bikram Yoga class. Who needs dialog, can I just glue this poster to the wall on my first day and call it a silent class?

Week 8

As predicted week 8 was stressful. Bikram was here for the first half of it and believe it not he still found it necessary to keep us up for two night in a row. Till 3am to we watched Indian movies. We still had to do 4 postures, study them and present them by the end of the week.
Bikram wants us to see these movies because it’s part of the Indian culture I understand that but why doesn’t he play them during the day? No point in wasting energy there, it is what it is. We are wiped out again.

Posture clinic picked up big time and on Tuesday there were people in my group who ended up presenting three postures in one day!
I totally screwed up my last posture on Thursday afternoon. For Spine Twisting posture and the set up is very precise with lefts and rights and how to put one leg over the other and your hand and heel at the same spot. I was so tired it just didn’t flow out of my mouth at all. For those of you who don’t know me very well, lefts and rights are a problem for me even on my best days.
So because of my bad performance I was not as relieved as I wanted to be when Posture Clinic was officially done. My teacher told me to get over it, stop wanting to be perfect. You want to be a good teacher not a perfect teacher.

When I got back to the room that afternoon to change for the 5pm class Shannon was there and had exactly the same thing happen to her. We decided to go to the lobby bar after class to have a bite to eat there and celebrate the fact that we were done for now and that we could actually relax in the our and a half break we get between end of yoga class and evening lecture that starts at 9pm.

The vibe has instantly changed around the group. There is a huge sense of relieve that we don’t have to deliver for the next week and most of us are in a very happy mood.

Of course insecurity about teaching our first class kicks in immediately. It reminds me al lot of driving lessons. After I passed my driving test (in Eurpe, the one in the US was only 5 minutes) I didn’t think I could possibly drive the car by myself without the instructor right there next to me in the passengers seat. And then I also know I really started learning how to drive from the moment I did get behind the wheel and drove a lot.
So that’s what all of us have to do now, we have to get behind the wheel as fast as possible and teach as many classes as we can. Get as much feedback as we can and really start learning how to teach a good Bikram Yoga class.

Most of us have studios to get back to and classes lined up already. It sounds so exciting! I get home on a Wednesday and will go to Italy for our family vacation on the following Sunday. Not sure if I can get a class in but will try to get at least a practice round in before I leave. There have been many studio owners visiting over the past 8 weeks and a lot of them have asked for teachers and offered their mentorship to anyone who wants to come. If I were single I would definitely go for it, that’s such a great way to learn and experience what teaching will be like.

Lyn has done a great lecture this week about being a teacher. It was by far the best lecture we’ve had while we were here. She really painted a good picture of what to expect and also how to behave as a Bikram Yoga teacher.
You are not a student in your studio anymore and people will look at you now as a teacher. That means you have to meet all the expectations of a Certified Bikram Yoga Teacher even if you are not in the yoga room.
It was very powerful. Lyn was at one point the owner of 4 studios in the San Francisco area, she knows what she is talking about.
I wrote six pages full of notes and hope that most scenarios never happen, but if they do I know what to do.

More and more I understand the mental and physical healing power of the Bikram yoga series. Some peoples’ stories are incredible. There are a lot of recovering addicts here. Many people with depression and eating disorders.
Also a lot of people with titanium pins and plates in their bodies. This yoga has given them their life back and they have a very deep understanding of its healing power. It inspiring to listen to their journeys.

We’ve had some fun with our core staff members here too. They took the stage one by one on Friday night and shared their first teaching experiences with us. It was not all that reassuring but it was very funny. We’ve gotten all very attached to them and it’s so nice to here some of their stories.

Since the pressure is off here we are all way more relaxed. We are splitting up into three groups:

* There are the ones who are so sad it’s ending and don’t want to leave at all.
* There are the ones who are happy we are almost done but will have mixed feelings about returning home.
* And then there are the ones that can’t wait to go home. Are glad it’s over and would skip this last week if they could to get on the plane even sooner.

The last one sums it all up for me. Don’t get me wrong this was by all means a great experience and training. And I wouldn’t change anything about my decision to come here.
But my life in ‘the real world’ is great and will be even better now so I can’t wait to get back to it. My family, my friends, my own cooking. And of course start teaching.

H-O-M-E is where my guys are and where my heart is, where I strongly feel I belong and haven’t been in way too long.

Week 9 will be a fun week. We will still have a very full schedule but it won’t be stressful. There will be the double classes thought by senior teachers from all over the world and the 5pm by Bikram of course. Then there will be some amazing yoga presentations on stage for us to watch.

On Friday we have a talent show at night. That evening our talented fellow trainees will show us what they’ve got. Some are singing, there is a belly dancer I’ll tell you all about it in next weeks report.

Saturday is graduation day. It will start at 3pm and will go on for a long time I assume. Bikram will officially certify most of us that day. He has announced that there are some among us that he needs to work with for a little longer. Not sure how and when that all would work out but I am sure there is a plan for those people. Right after our graduation there will be a 1 week advance training here in Palm Springs. It’s already fully booked and even some of the people of my training even signed up for an extra week.

As of tonight I will officially start counting the ‘sleeps’ till Saturday. Not only will I become a Certified Bikram Yoga teacher, my husband will fly in from Germany to actually be there with me.
It’s big, this training was big, the fact that I did it is big, my feelings and emotions have been big. Becoming a Bikram Yoga teacher is big. Teaching this beautiful practice will be big.
When I said goodbye to the boys 8 weeks ago in the parking lot of the Santa Monica beach club I knew it was big.
Having Chris fly over here to be with me while I complete the cycle is huge.
There is nobody I’d rather share this with than Chris who always supports me in the right way and is always there for me. He is my perfect example and the one who I want to be nothing but perfect for. He is the rock-star who made it possible for met to be here and not have to worry about home for a moment. Who also took care of 'us' for the past 8 weeks while I was just taking care of ‘me’. It is a very humbling feeling and I am ever so grateful for all of it.

I am the luckiest girl I know! (I hope this MacBook is waterproof)

One day during our training Rajashree ended her class with a piece about 'love' she wanted to share. It really resonated with me and the more I read it the deeper I understand it and absolutely love it. I'd like to share it with you in the chapter below.

Love

The Invitation
by Oriah Mountain Dreamer, Indian Elder

It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your hearts longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals, or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true, I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul.

I want to know if you can be faithful and therefore trustworthy. I want to know if you can see beauty, even when it is not pretty every day, and if you can source your life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours or mine, and still stand on the edge of a lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes!"

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done for the children.

It doesn't interest me who you are, or how you came to be here- I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself, and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

Give me a sign

When I was little my mom often used the expression: "there is more between heaven and earth" in Dutch: "er is meer tussen hemel en aarde".
It's an expression that has always intrigued me.

When I walked into the yoga room on Thursday morning I felt I had nothing to give. The tank was empty. My body and soul felt raw. The first breathing exercise was so hard and my mind would not stop asking me ‘what are you doing here?'.

Determined not to give in I had to dig deep. By the time we got to Awkward pose I looked down at the ground and there is was…..

A crystal clear sign that I was exactly where I needed to be! The rest of my class was solid and I was on a mission to prove I got the message.

Pictures

This posture is so hard to do with a cold body on a concrete floor, but we step up to make sure our buddy who is delivering the posture does it well.
Just wanted to make sure you get the picture, this is for real and as you can see it does get used.
Shakti is doing great business here. The little Bikram shop in the hotel sells a special line of Shakti apparel with Bikram's logo on it. And then the plain tiger shorts that are a must have.
A hot head after shot.
And a hot belly, can you imagine how clean I am by now? From inside out bones to the skin...