Full Moon on the Rise  
Today is Friday and our second to last day here at the Third Series Teacher Training with Tim Miller. I arrived at the studio for the 6:00am Pranayama routine. I didn’t miss a session in the entire two weeks. This has been one of my favorite parts of this two week immersion with Timji. Yesterday Tim asked if it was getting any easier for us? I did feel a slight bit of lightness in today’s practice. Like anything, you just have to do this everyday to feel comfortable with it. I am really looking forward to practicing more at my own pace to be able to develop my relationship with it. The pranayama is truly an incredible form of concentration and meditation. The intricacy of the coordination required combined with the delicacy of relaxing the mental and physical agitation that arises is priceless. What a gem of an experience.

  
I stored up my Primary series practice for today and I am so glad that I did. I remember a good friend of mine, Tim Feldmann (“Little Tim”), telling me how challenging working all the way through Intermediate and adding a portion of Advanced into the morning routine can be to maintain on a daily basis. You know how someone can give you clue that you know one day you will probably know what they mean but you can’t quite fathom yet? I think I now understand what he was saying. This is some intense work. You wake up feeling every single fiber of your being and then have to find the courage to repeat it all over again. Yet what an inspirational process. So when Friday came around today, and it was time to do Primary, I felt like I had been the greatest gift. When you feel all “beat up” the Primary series is like a soothing bath or a nice gentle walk through the park. Well, I still sweat like there was no tomorrow and speaking of which tomorrow is a full moon. I think Tim might have planned this perfectly to coordinate with the full moon rising just as we are closing this session. It couldn’t be a better conjunction of planets and stars and…some rest.

  
After class I snuck down to the beach for a surf. The water was so glassy and there were about a million people in the water. The sets were coming through about once every 20 minutes with about 2 waves per set. So if you do the math that gives you about a one and one thousandth chance of catching a wave. Non the less the weather was so beautiful and the water felt like a recharging salt bath set to the best temperature. I also had the chance to have breakfast at Swami’s cafe right across from Swami’s beach and Paramahansa Yogananda’s Hermitage. I LOVE Encinitas! Outside of Juno there is no other place I would like to live. Clearly everyone else feels the same way which makes for some crowded conditions.

  
This afternoon’s Teacher Training session was so great. We finished our investigation of the poses of the finishing series and concluded with Uthplitihi right at exactly 5pm. Tim orchestrated this masterfully. It was timed so perfectly. He also read from the Srimad Bhagavatam which is a hefty text from the genre of Indian literature called the Puranas. It is an ancient scripture that espouses the path of Bhakti Yoga which is the path of devotion. I took notes while he spoke to keep myself alert and I enjoyed the stories that he shared from it. We sang a Hanuman Chalisa to put the the theory to practice and Tim made joke that we were going to have to sing a Chalisa tomorrow without looking at the words as a test. I have a feeling we are going to pass with flying colors.