I�m having trouble getting my brain moving this morning. The thing about Garfield that really won me over was that he hated Mondays. As a kid, it never occurred to me to ask why a housecat would care whether or not it was Monday, but I sure appreciated his dislike for them.

That goes back to me never being a good sleeper. An insomniac since about the age of four, getting up and moving by a certain time has always been a challenge for me. Despite that, I really did like school. I was all about having a routine and living in a world that actually followed some kind of logic. Keeping things safe and orderly was actually a possibility, and better yet, the teachers would even tell you how.

Well, anyway, I can�t claim that to be my problem this time. I slept quite a bit this weekend. I had yoga teacher training, though. Saturday was some lecture and a tough yoga class. Sunday, we had some lecture, and then we broke up into groups and each of us taught a mini-yoga class to the group and got critiqued.

I thought I would do horribly my first time teaching, but it wasn�t so bad. I felt surprisingly comfortable being a teacher. I am often surprised at how well I do in leadership roles because I usually have no desire to be in that position, at all. Then again, ALL of my astrological signs point to me being a strong and charismatic leader.

The only reason I started teacher training was because yoga has been such a powerful practice for me, and I want to give others the opportunity to discover it, too.

A lot of people see it as merely exercise, but it can be done in such a way to really allow the energy from the universe to flood in. It flushes out the system. It helps get rid of all that caustic stuff we carry around with us on a daily basis.

Not that I�m the poster child for a clean system (energy-wise). I find that to be true for most spiritually minded people, though. Many people get to be spiritually minded because we�re looking for something that�s beyond what�s in front of us. The reason we�re more apt to look is because the stuff in front of us hasn�t been so great. We need more than what the world is offering us, so we find it.

Of course that isn�t true for everyone, but I�ve noticed that the deeply spiritually people are often carrying around a lot of pain. Maybe it�s because they�ve suffered a lot of misfortune, maybe it�s because they�re just extra fragile, which is hard to be in this world. I feel like I�ve had a lot of contact with a lot of spiritually minded people because I�ve travelled in Buddhist (mostly converts) and Yogic circles.

The other thing that they seem to have is a lot of hope.

Of course, I can�t really substantiate most of this because I don�t usually have personal conversations with most of these people. It�s mostly just the feeling I get when I watch them.

So, we�re all suffering, but we�ve all had our own personal triumphs, too, and I guess that�s what keeps us going.

Despite all my psychological problems, my body is feeling quite good. So much for that mind-body connection that everyone keeps going on about. Ok, well, I�ve been really tired, I�ll acknowledge that.

Last week, I had a lot of trouble sleeping, and then over the weekend, as soon as I got home from teacher training, I was so sleepy that I could barely keep my eyes open. Saturday night, I was asleep by 7PM and last night, I only stayed up long enough to get a few household things accomplished and then went straight to bed.

I feel best in the mornings. By evening time, I�m getting tired and cranky, and my body hurts more.

One thing I did last night, even though my body was screaming by this time (Hey, I did seven yoga classes in a row on Sunday. Sure, they were short, but SEVEN!) was some ballet practice. That falls into the category of I�m doing something I like and I am not going to give it up just because I am wincing in pain during the grand plie�s.

I�m still really struggling with the arabesque body position, too, but I�ve only been trying for about a week.

Tonight, I�m double-booked with a Buddhist board meeting and dance class. Even though I missed the last board meeting, I am leaning towards going to dance because I missed the last dance class, too!

Besides, I�m going to return Nicole�s intro to ballet book to her before something tragic happens to it. With four cats and an absent-minded boyfriend, nothing is really safe in my house.

You know, I should have become a dancer when I was still borderline underweight, but hey, whatever, it�s fun. Besides, I never had a dancer�s body, anyway.

I probably should have become a dancer when my age was still in the single digits, but we work with what we�ve got. Besides, by this time, I�d probably be retired, have a bunch of injuries, stuck with a desk job and be just as fat. Maybe it all works out the same in the end.

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