Great Expectations (and great disappointments)

Jeremiah had a weekend alone with the girls. They all had fun.  C. took longer naps than usual and J. took more quiet time. It's so unfair how kids react differently to different parents!

I just completed day two out of seven for my Itsy Bitsy Yoga Instructor Training (the last 2 days are a weekend in September).  It's been... not so good.

I'm very excited about the Itsy Bitsy Yoga program and full of possibilities of what to do with my training and what path to take to integrate it into my life as a job. But that's another story.

Right now I need to write about my disappointment with the training, and then I'll have it out of my head and I can move on.

I have a whole list of gripes regarding the training (none of which involves the awesome program- it's all about how the training is being run and it's logistics).   Mostly, I'm disappointed bc we're a group of instructors and facilitators, taught by a world-renowned facilitator, and some of the fundamentals of education are being violated.  It's frustrated to be a part of an education training where the environment is unsuitable for learning, timing is not respected, students with special needs are not properly accommodated (in our case, moms with their babies along), promises about the "agenda" are not kept, we're always let out late bc we can't leave while a neighboring yoga class has their shivasana, and the instructor rambles and gets distracted.  Very frustrating for me.  We know better. We should practice what we preach.

I've seen one girl cry at the end of both classes bc she was so overwhelmed. Another girl admitted that she went home after class yesterday and cried. So I'm not the only one who's disappointed. But of a class of 15, I think I'm one of 5 who aren't already a yoga instructor. The class as a whole seems to feel like "this is life" and that we're practicing yoga in the sense of accepting difficulties as they come and feeling at peace with them. But I think it's BS. I paid good money to be here and I expect a lot in exchange for my time away from my family. 

But here's my best shot at practicing the self-awareness and cosmic energy that I hear we need to work on.

• I am overwhelmed by the energies and auras of the other people participating in the training.   It is making me withdraw into myself and leaving me depleted, with a headache. 
  
• Perhaps I am so overwhelmed with the others in the class because they are all powerful, amazing, and beautiful women, achieving things that I wish to achieve one day. Maybe I shrink myself in comparison to them because, even though I don't want to, on some level I'm comparing myself to them.

• Perhaps I am projecting my fears on to their actions. I feel oversensitive to how they react to me bc I'm feeling very vulnerable facing this new opportunity in my life. I think everyone in that class is very nice and not being mean, but my first reaction is that "they don't like me". Sigh. I'm usually not this ridiculous. 
  

• I am reacting to the environment and the facilitation in the same way that a baby would, which is interesting because the class is all about how to facilitate and interact with babies.   I am living what I'm supposed to be learning. I am reacting strongly to too much stimulation. I don't like when we have to switch rooms and I have to get settled into a new environment, or when things don't go as expected, or when I was promised a lunch break and then it finally comes over an hour later.  It makes me fussy, just like a baby.
  

• My brain is overloaded with the new possibilities and the emotions of being away from  my babies for 12 hours each day (we keep them up so I see them for an hour before bed, but I leave before they wake up). I am overloaded with all the new information I'm learning in the training and following a facilitator who's easily distracted and jumps all over the place and doesn't always finish her sentences or thoughts.
  

• As a result of being overloaded, I'm nearly hallucinating. Everyone in my class looks like someone I already know or someone famous. I mean it! I have look-alikes of Melissa Etheridge, Natalie Portman, and several friends from college.  And the girl who works at the place we eat lunch every day is totally Katie from a past season of the real world.   Other people look familiar even if I can't place them. My brain just can't handle anything else so it's frantically categorizing the new input so that I can function. I can't believe how overloaded I am over something so small. You'd think I never get out or something. 
  

Yin: I am forgiving of all of this because some of this is unintentional, some of it 'is what it is'  (and I need to accept it), and some of it is my own issues. 

Yang: I am not forgiving because I want this to be better than this.  I am sacrificing family time to be here. I am taking days off of work and spending our family money. I am missing my family. All for the chance at a new opportunity. And if the opportunity doesn't work out, I'll be disappointed. But that's a different story. For this training, it's all about how would I rather spend the moments of my life- doing this training, such as it is, or spending time with my family? I judge every moment of my life that way.  The world at large has a lot to live up to!

The goal is to bring this yin and yang into harmony and be at peace with this and at peace with myself. Duh. But I'm not there yet.

Best Moment of the day: hugging and cuddling my baby girls when I got home.