When one chooses to be a yoga teacher, one has to accept the fact that they will work whilst other people are having fun. It’s just the way of things. There’s no point running a yoga class at 9.30am on a Monday morning as very few people will have the luxury of turning up!

Working evenings never really bothers me but there is something about a Saturday morning — a feeling of sanctity that I presume is left over from doing the Monday to Friday 9 to 5 grind for so many years. Saturday mornings used to be a time for long lie ins and cooked breakfast and reading the papers and generally doing as little as possible.

These days my Saturday mornings are spent in the company of between 6 and 8 pregnant women! If you’d told me two years ago that this would be the case I would have thought you quite mad, but in fact once I get over the intial shock of getting up early on a Saturday and preparing for the class, I think my pregnancy yoga class is my favourite to teach.

Which is probably an odd statement coming from somebody who has never been, nor has any intention to be pregnant!

Ancient wisdom seperates the stages of womanhood into: maiden, mother, crone (no, I don’t particularly like the word crone either — how about wise woman?). I guess at 34 I’m well into that “mother” aspect of womanhood. However, this does not necessarily incorporate having children of one’s own. There are so many ways that this nuturing side of womanhood can be expressed:- as teachers, as childcarers, as midwives…. as pregnancy and postnatal yoga teachers.

I play a small part in helping quite a lot of women bring their little ones into the world. And that is an amazing thing.

I got an unplanned night off last night due to a power cut. Being self employed it was an unpaid night off as well. Sigh…

The class started fine, I settled everyone into savasana, scanning their bodies for areas of tension, listening to the sound of their breath and then….poof….the lights went out. Although it is still light at 7.30pm here the yoga studio at the health centre is in a kind of semi-basement, so we were rather plunged into darkness. I had no choice but to refund money and send everybody home.

What with that and one of my private clients cancelling this week due to a child care mix up, I don’t really feel I’ve got into the swing of work again this week at all! Maybe the universe is trying to tell me something….

Project Fitness continues well. I did my second gym session today after two days of power walking. Pretty much the same routine as I did on Tuesday, but with some extra machine work for legs and arms.

Linking back to yesterday’s post about music – there is one place where I really need my music, and that is on the treadmill or cross trainer. Today’s choice was Black Stone Cherry, very loud! I’ve always found it gives you that extra boost when it comes to cardio work. Then I toned it down to some Wah! for my mat work.

Not much else planned for the rest of the day. I have the day off today. Like I said, I haven’t really got back into the swing after holidays yet. Still I’m sure that’ll change next week!

When I was younger I nearly always did my yoga practice to music. Whilst I am a rock music fan, obviously I used to choose something a bit quieter for my practice — some Wah! some buddhist chants, some Shiva Rhea. These days, however, I find it really distracting to listen to music while I’m practicing.

I’m not sure why. It could be that my practice has changed so much — from Astanga Vinyasa to a gentle meditative Viniyoga practice, that because rather than doing a set routine of postures I am listening to what my body wants and needs each day and in order to listen I need silence. It could be that as I have worked deeper and deeper into my yoga practice I no longer feel the silence around me oppressive, I no longer feel the silence to be a void that needs filling with sound, but instead welcome it on to my mat with me.

On the other hand, I studied for my A Levels listening to Jane’s Addiction and New Model Army very very loud – now I can’t even reply to an email if there are any distractions so it could just be a simple matter of getting older!