Meet J – a current Spring 2019 ACCESS Trainee – and follow her as she shares about her experiences, breakthroughs, hurdles, and unexpected results through the Evolution Training Institute ACCESS 250-Hour Training!

Week 4 Anatomy: 

We learned about the major functions of skeletal muscles! We dissected how muscle allows us to maintain posture, sit up, bend over, stand up straight, and how it supports and protects our organs. Before this weekend, I didn’t know that muscle stores protein and maintains body temp. This allows for our muscles to build tapas during practice! 
To summarize the anatomy portion for the weekend – our muscles work very hard for us during our practice!

Inquiry work and my experience:

Day 2 got a bit emotional for me. We did our inquiry work on what fears are and the actions we take when we are living in these fears. I identified my constant fear, as fear of the unknown. My reaction to living with this fear is, instead of accepting that I cannot control the future, I default to getting anxious and tense. This leads to self-medicating or whatever I can do to dull down my feelings of what’s to come.

Sharing this with another person in the training was even scarier. I was afraid of being judged, but I was quickly reminded that I have a supportive crew who cares about me in this training. We went home that day with the challenge to really look at our defaults when fear confronts us. Whether it’s a fear of being alone, being a failure, being wrong – or just having feelings in general. Questions to ask myself in those moments are; What do I default to when one of these fears shows up? Do I hide? Do I get easily annoyed, offended, tense, dwell?

My most impactful moment from Week 4:

The inquiry was very impactful, I have spent the last couple days just thinking about situations from my past and what my defaults were, how they affected myself and relationships.

My personal discoveries during Week 4 Practice Teaching:

Day 3 of Session 4, we learned about the Opening and Release section of the Journey Into Power sequence. The release section is a very important part of the sequence after our muscles are heated and active from all of the work in the sections prior.

We also did a Block Class which involved flowing through Sun Salutation A and B while using a block to focus on as practice for a strong Drishti. 
Practice teaching is always slightly scary to me. This time we practiced taught with a small group and added verbal assists, which are “concrete actions that when taken create connection” during a class. A verbal assist includes a specific action verb, a body part, and a direction to move you on your mat. For example,  “press your right hand into your mat, lift your pelvis to your belly button”.

Adding in these cues in between calling the poses was unbelievably hard for me. I was overthinking everything I wanted to say, so everything seemed to come out in this unsure, jumbled mess, which led to me feeling not present in my teaching. This has presented itself as a challenge for me to work on and keep practicing before next session!

My most enjoyable moment(s) from Week 4:

My favorite part has been Assisting training. Getting to practice hands-on assists with our fellow training group has been so helpful for me. I feel like I’m getting really good at it and can’t wait to start doing it during classes!

We were also introduced to our group project, which I am super excited about! The project will be a fundraising event that we organize as a team, with proceeds benefitting a non-profit of our choosing. We all worked together and shared ideas for what our event could look like. I don’t want to give any of our planning secrets away… but you all should definitely be there because it will be a blast and who doesn’t love a good fundraiser?!

Week 4 means I am halfway through the ACCESS program and I am feeling pretty good! I already know I am going to be sad after it ends. I am feeling proud of myself for not being scared when challenged and for pushing through. I love this program for so many reasons – but mainly because I am discovering so much about myself.

Like I’ve said before, I am experiencing this training with a great, supportive crew, who are pretty much family at this point. We’ve laughed and cried together, and gotten each other through rough moments. This training is so incredible, but it’s the people in the training that are making it truly memorable. I would do anything for my teammates!

ACCESS 250-Hour Training Program: Learn More HERE – Apply HERE