Life Lately January 2019

Today I’m sharing a life update and some January highlights.

How is the first month of 2019 just about done already? 2019 is speeding by. It’s been kind of a dreary month to be completely honest, with the buildup to Christmas and the fact that here in Calgary we still have a few more months til we’ll have green grass outdoors.

I’m also missing the longer days and sunlight. I’ll be very glad when it doesn’t take 10 minutes to get out the door, with putting on boots, a coat, toque, gloves, and a scarf.

Despite all of that though, not everything has been bad – there have definitely been some good things that happened in January, which I’ll be sharing below.

Spending time with family

My family had a very tough end of 2018. I’m not ready to share why yet on the blog, but I’m very grateful that my family has come together despite what we’ve all been going through the last few months.

Back at the beginning of the month we spent the afternoon together going out to eat and then seeing a movie. This weekend we’re celebrating my brother’s 33rd birthday by going out for a birthday meal. I texted him a few days ago to see what kind of cake he wanted me to make, and instead of a cake he asked if I would make him some Eatmore bars. It’s a Canadian candy bar that my brother absolutely loves. I made him some a few years ago and he swears that they taste just like the original. So this year I”ll be making Eatmore bars instead of a cake for his birthday.

Making yoga progress

I January I made some pretty exciting (at least to me) yoga progress. I was at one of my favorite beginner ashtanga classes at The Yoga Shala. One of the closing postures of the primary series is tolasana or scale pose. You sit in lotus and lift yourself off the floor with your hands. U modify by just crossing my legs because lotus isn’t available to me. I’ve never been able to lift my hips off the floor – until a few weeks ago. My feet were still on the floor, but my hips were up! Needless to say, I was pretty excited about it even though it was modified.

Then at yoga teacher training this weekend, I did a modified forearm stand. My torso was perpendicular to the floor with my legs parallel to the floor and my feet on the wall for support. I’ve never done any inversions besides downward dog before, so it was another exciting yoga moment for me.

Yoga teacher training

Speaking of yoga teacher training, it’s hard to believe that I’ll be all done in just two short months. I only have four more weekends of teacher training to go and that’s it!

As I was driving home on Sunday afternoon after teacher training that things are finally starting to come together for me. I’m learning the Sanskrit names for poses and they’re starting to become second nature to me. The meditation and philosophy side of yoga was something that I hadn’t spent much time learning about before teacher training, but I’m so glad that I get to learn about it now. It doesn’t feel as “foreign” as it did when I first started.

I’m also starting to think about what I want to do when I finish yoga teacher training. What kind of classes do I want to teach? Where do I want to teach? Do I want to lead workshops or retreats? Do private sessions? There’s a lot of options available and I’m still trying to figure out where I fit in the yoga world.

If you’re a yoga teacher, how did you first start teaching? I’d love to hear about your journey and how you started!

Personal trainer expanded scope of practice

This month I finally did some required professional development and completed some work to expand my scope of practice. I had been putting it off since Christmas, so it felt really good to finally get it done. I thought that it was going to be long and time consuming, but it totally wasn’t.

I’m now fully qualified to work with teenagers and seniors with one stable health condition. Up until this point I had to refer any potential client who was over the age of 69 years old. I’m pretty excited that I’m not limited by an age anymore if the client is otherwise healthy.

It’s probably not very noteworthy for anyone outside of the fitness industry, but if you with within a scope of practice, you’ll understand where I’m coming from.

Now that you’ve learned about some of my highlights from January, I’d love to hear some of yours – leave them in the comments below.