Yoga: A Gift of My Divorce
The morning before my divorce mediation began, I woke up and suddenly “knew” what keywords to use in Google to find private 200 hour yoga teacher training close to my home. I had been searching for training programs that would work with my life, schedule, and budget for years. Before that morning, none of the options I came across would work for me. I couldn’t take 12 weekends away from my family with 3 kids in extracurricular activities and a husband who believed that kids activities were my domain as a stay-at-home-mom. The prospect of not having that husband opened up possibilities though, and paying for a teacher training program before mediation was final seemed like a good move (and was approved by my attorney, btw). I spent two hours on the phone with the studio owner and with a click on Pay Now, I began my journey to becoming a yoga teacher.
The timing of this training literally saved me during the last few months of my marriage and first year of being divorced. It gave me a Betsy-shaped goal to work towards. What should have taken 6 months took 15 months, but the practice of yoga and all of the reading that was required as part of the teacher training was like God remodeling my insides. Together we took out walls that were never meant to be within me and got down to some of the original structure that had been covered up over the years. It was worth the labor, intensive work, and extended time table. Remodeling always takes more time than you think it should. The training definitely gave me more than it required of me.
As I came to the end of my training and had to begin preparing to teach a class to the studio owner, I began to question if I really wanted to teach. I loved learning and practicing yoga, but the fear of being up in front of others and the self-doubts were strong. For every voice of doubt, telling me that I didn’t know enough to teach yoga and hadn’t been doing yoga long enough, a quiet knowing gently pushed me forward. When I thought about quitting, another voice would encourage me to finish what I had started. It dawned on me that the most important commitment I could keep was to myself. The fears were strong, but my courage to keep going grew stronger, buttressed by the inner knowing. This was something I needed to do - just for me. I didn’t have to know where it would lead. I didn’t have to teach, but I did need to become a teacher. Then I’d figure out what place teaching yoga had in my life.
“I didn’t have to teach, but I did need to become a teacher.”
I pushed myself to finish the training, build a class, and teach it while being evaluated by the studio owner in an otherwise empty room. It was such an uncomfortable experience, but what I felt after doing so was…I don’t even know the words! I felt like I had come home to myself. I had been fully me, nervous on the top layers but anchored to my depths. Teaching that class opened a door to a different part of me but one that had always been there, waiting for me to find her.
After a few years of teaching, I found a journal from the late 1990s with things I wanted to do in my life; right there on the list was “become a yoga instructor.” I don’t even remember knowing about yoga at that point of my life! But there it was in my handwriting…a longing of my soul that I had ignored. Or hadn’t valued. Or maybe it was just finally time for that seed to grow and bloom.
Many who practice yoga are looking for the class to unite them spirit, mind, and body. For the time on the mat to connect to their depths and the quiet there, but also to have a physical experience that is both strengthening and opening. The mat is a place where I can choose just to be in the body and life I have today without judgment or comparison. It is a place where I can work to escape from the thoughts that imprison me in other parts of my life. It’s a place of gratitude for all that God made me to be. A place where as a perfectly imperfect human I can encourage others to breathe and settle into their perfectly imperfect selves, learning to appreciate all that they already ARE.
Yoga is more about what is happening on my insides than being someone who can demonstrate the perfect poses. There’s no Instagram-worthy part to my practice. While yoga has given me some nice shape to my arms, what it has done for me is more than that. It has helped me become more of who I was created to be. And it probably wouldn’t have happened without my divorce. How’s that for a silver lining?