Yoga Teacher Training: A Pilgrimage

The Graduates: Lumi Power Yoga’s 2014 Teacher Trainee Tribe (L-R Corey Frazer, Francesca Hall,  Audrey Cadel, Rory Hopkins, Ari Iso-Rautio, Matilda Iso-Rautio, Elina Iso-Rautio,  Pippa Berger, Natalie Smikle, Erin Dewar)

In the same week that I stuffed my bag full of excess yoga pants, nuts and notebooks to leap into my yoga teacher training, my Mum strapped on her walking boots, her freshly pressed quick-dry man suit, adorned her rucksack and took her first steps along the 820-odd kilometres of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage track. Talk about competition…

But as she and I kicked back over this last weekend in my hometown of London – she still many miles from our Australian home – sipping wine on the Thames, hoeing into gastronomic pub meals and sharing of our stories, I quickly realised how startlingly similar our experiences have been over the past two months.

We both climbed up to cliff tops,

We walked through fields,

We stumbled onto friendships that then themselves found secret crevices of our being to lodge in.

She met people from all walks of life  – and loved them all.

I met souls and hearts and minds: I met warriors of love and of grace. I met battle-shielded knights and soldiers of gentle courage. I met wounded children and mothers and lovers. I met angels of luminous energy and light.

We laughed, we cried, we loved, we fought, we broke apart, we held our hearts up to the world and we wailed out into the deafening silence, ‘I am here!’ before planting those pounding hearts back inside our chests and taking one more step.

And just when we thought we’d gone the distance, a great mountain rose up before us. We climbed to the top and there was planted the path of forgiveness, coiling itself round and round into a point at the centre of it all.

Slowly and delicately we made our way into the heart of it. The place where we met ourselves. Where we stared straight into the centre of our universe and said, ‘It’s time to come home.’

We laid a piece of ourselves down and walked away without another word.

It seems the path we choose to take is irrelevant. So to is the destination.

It is the journey that is the thing. And may it always be full of unexpected wonder.

My declaration: I am letting go of my stories of the past and those of the future. I believe that my life is yet to be written. And so as I step into the present moment, it will be with a practice of connection, acceptance and lightness.

I will follow the path of least resistance and trust that this will lead me home.

And that is who I am.