Aerial Teacher Training

I started doing aerial yoga about two years ago and it is an amazing experiance, where hammocks are attached to the ceiling and you use them as a prop to help you stretch your body, get into deeper poses and inversions. 

Devi at the Purple Lotus is the primary aerial yoga teacher in the country and was the first person to bring this style of yoga to the UK. How lucky am I to have this on my doorstep!

My first lesson was an eye opener and throughout the class I just kept thinking "I can't do this ... I can't do that" but I was wrong. It is just your mind telling you that you can't .... you can! It is really easy once you close your eyes, believe and let go.

Mike joined me in classes about a year ago. He had a severe wrist injury with work just after Andrew was born and finds many of the traditional poses that require weight bearing through the wrists impossible for him, downward dog being a prime example. Devi suggested that he try it and he has never looked back. Hanging upside down was the thing he found the hardest and initially he couldn't stay for long before having to come up and felt really dizzy. Now there is no stopping him, he hangs like a bat along with the rest of us and is invariably the last one to come up. Being inverted is the best thing inthe world ... you just have to smile and it is so empowering.

So when a teacher training course came up I leapt at the chance to take part and even though I am only travelling 13 miles as opposed to halfway around the world the experience is still going to be amazing.

Today was our first day and we started the day with a bit of fun taking part in a Nia class. Nia is a dance based yoga based on 52 moves to explore the range of body movement to promote healing, health and well-being. I have the rhythmn of a dad dancing at the kid's party. My mind sends the messages to my body but when I look at myself in the mirror and what everyone else is doing there is no comparison - how can a 'shimmy' be so hard? It is safe to say that I wil not be giving those contestents on Strictly Come Dancing a run for their money anytime soon but we all had great fun and worked up a bit of a sweat in the course of it.

After a light lunch we started to go through the initial warm up, sun salutations and rigging before finishing for the day. Tomorrow is going to be tough with an early start and late finish ... I think exhaustion may be coming my way sooner than later but I am really looking forward to taking my aerial yoga to a new level.

Technical difficulties (Andrew using my camera and not charging it - does that count as technical?) meant there are no photos today so I have put some archive one's on to give you an idea. Watch this space tomorrow for the flying bat in action!

Namaste