Regarding the Anusara Certification Exam

Nov 19, 2008, Expanding Like a Flower

Begin - day eight of this ten day odyssey that is the Anusara Certification Exam. For those of you that don't know, Anusara Certification is not your average yoga teacher credential. It requires hundreds, which usually runs into thousands, of hours of study, and a rather grueling testing process that is of two parts. Part one is the 10 day written exam that I am in the midst of now.

Don't get me wrong, it's not unpleasant. In fact I've been feeling a kind of giddy happiness since I began it - being forced to hunker down with my beloved studies is a luxury. What makes it grueling is what's at stake. I am writing for my teachers eyes. And editing, and re-writing, and re-wording and re-stating and fact checking, until I have a twitch beneath one of mine.

It is a powerful and sometimes excruciating experience to have the best of your self pulled out of you, kicking and screaming like a newborn baby. And that's not the only part of this process that is reminiscent of birth. The very length of the ordeal makes it a test not in the "quiz" sense, but a test in the sense of "to test your mettle." I'm being asked to show, if maybe only to myself, what it is I'm made of. When something matters to us, we learn to what degree we are actually capable of expanding.

Expanding, really pushing out beyond our previously accepted limitations, is hard. It's just hard, to widen and broaden yourself from within, to actually change the shape of your identity with nothing more than your own determination. And yet it's what nature does , what all forms of life do. Think of a tulip or a daffodil. Think of a two year old becoming a three year old, and then a five year old, and then a college professor or a mailman.

The pose of the week is urdhva prasarita eka padasana - the standing splits. How do get your way foot up there in the sky? You soften , you dig deep , and you push.

Think of me, and wish me luck.

Alison

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P.S.

Here is a beautiful photo of Desiree Rumbaugh, a beloved friend and teacher, in the full pose (urdhva prasarita ekapadasana). Third image down. If you want to try it yourself, here is a link to some very basic instructions - not great, but all I could find. Understand, this is not a beginner pose. I would modify the instructions by adding that both hands on the floor (rather than holding your ankle, as shown) is helpful for all but the most accomplished of yogis for balance and support, and that hands on blocks, or a on low table or the seat of a chair, is more reasonable for most humans. Also, that the leg will go much less high than in either photo the first several (several hundred, several thousand) times you do the pose. That's not the point. Just try to lift that guy up. It's not easy to blossom like a flower.

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