'If You Want to Master Something, Teach It'

When I first started thinking about this "What Is 35?" project, I did online searches to see if anyone else had done what I was planning to do. Though I didn't see anyone else interviewing people about their experiences of being 35, I did find one blog, "Starting My Life at 35", that was tackling many of the same issues swishing around in my brain.

In this blog, which its creator started three years ago and has maintained to the present, the creator talks about the big changes and risks she was planning to take in her life at the age of 35. Reading through her earliest posts, I admired how brave she was to not only admit that her life wasn't completely hitting her expectations but that she was also willing to lay out her goals before the universe, ready to take the feedback (anonymous, though it may be) if it didn't work or she didn't try.

I've been thinking about what I want to accomplish in my life this year and beyond. Some of it I'm still formulating and other bits I'm not ready to say out loud yet. One thing I've been contemplating for a few years and am now confident in saying yes to is taking yoga teachers training.

Last week I wrote a bit about my Kundalini yoga practice. Like so many disciplines, in yoga students have the opportunity to become teachers. Even at this point, I'm not sure if I want to be a yoga teacher but the idea of making an in-depth study into something I enjoy so much and feel so much benefit from is really appealing.

When my practice was at its strongest a few years ago, teachers training was a somewhat fuzzy concept to me. I knew people who were going through the program and thought it was an interesting option, but I didn't consider the following steps of what it would mean or take to participate myself.

As I've returned to my practice over the past few months, countless classmates and teachers have asked if I've taken teachers training. The first few times I said no, the subject was dropped, then one time a classmate confidently responded, "You will."

These many months, many asks and many confirmations later, I've decided to accept this challenge from the universe and am committing myself to taking teachers training in 2013. This will be a sizable commitment but I really feel I'm ready to give it my all now.