This morning I am finishing my written exam for Yoga Teacher Training (YTT), and later today I graduate with my peers from the Heart Space Yoga Studio – 200 hour program. I feel so much gratitude for this experience.

Back in 2015, a couple of months after my mom’s death, I was on vacation in Cape Cod and I knew I needed to do something for myself to heal. So I sent an email to get enrolled in a Yoga Teacher Training. It felt like a way to reorient my own ‘true north’.

Back in 1996, when I was 21, and seeking clarity in my life path, I traveled to Val Morin, Quebec to do my first YTT. It gave me the chance to fully focus on myself, work on my ‘stuff’, and helped me become clear on my vision for life. Now almost two decades later I thought it was time to enroll again in another YTT.

That year I got eight months into the training I realized that I couldn’t finish. I hit a wall with too many things happening in my life and the one thing that I felt was ‘for me’ had to wait. I had hit that ‘pause button’ for three years, and when I started again in the fall of 2018, I knew that the timing was just right.

Grieving is hard work, and I feel we live in a culture that doesn’t understand how to create ‘safe space’ for this phase. We are expected to hurry through our sadness and to not show signs of how much we are hurting, but I think it is in experiencing those feelings that we begin to live into our fullness.

For me, the lesson of  my parents’ early death made me realize that I don’t want to postpone JOY. I don’t want to wait to chase my dreams. I don’t want to fill my life with busy-ness.

My lifelong setpoint is “happy-go-lucky” but this grieving phase of life had me feeling Eyeore-ish. It was so foreign and uncomfortable. Through yoga, I was making time for myself to shed the tears, to do the inner work, and to be comfortable enough to ask for help. Through yoga, we each go for our own reasons. For me, I seek finding home and feeling whole.

For me, Yoga Teacher Training has helped my compass re-adjusting. I know that life will never feel like it used to…and that is okay. My mom had always been ‘true north’ for me, and when she was gone, I felt lost at sea. Somehow, Yoga Teacher Training, is what brought me back on course, taught me how to adjust the sails, and helped me feel like I found solid ground.

With gratitude to my fellow yogis….

With gratitude to my teachers….

“Serve, Love, Give, Purify, Meditate, Realise; Be good, Do good, Be kind, Be compassionate.” ~ Swami Sivanada

Andrea Thibideau and the Heart Space Yoga Studio