Wow.
77 days gone by. This is officially the longest time I’ve been away from London, since first moving there in 2000.
The question is: will I ever be allowed back in.
The previous record belonged to bikram yoga teacher training, which I think lasted just over 10 weeks in total (including a 10-day holiday, after completing it).
Speaking of teacher training, this week I had the pleasure of catching up with this rockstar:
AJ Wilkerson, meine Damen und Herren (aka Tulsi, as she’s known all over Luxembourg).
AJ and I trained together as bikram teachers and ended up in the same posture clinic group, the world-famous Group 16, from San Diego TT Spring 2010, voted best group in the entire history of bikram training, by us.
Now, according to my calculations, this blog is read by a maximum of 7 people. Of these, maybe 2 are not aware of what bikram teacher training is, exactly.
To sum it up to you, I’m going to use AJ’s own words:
‘The most traumatic fun I’ve ever had.’
On paper, training consists of:
- 2 bikram classes + 2 lectures a day, Monday - Friday
- 1 bikram class on Saturdays
- Rest of the weekend free.
In reality, this is how it translates:
- 2 bikram classes - which, put together, usually run over the length of a whole extra class
+ 2 sessions of complete and utter verbal delirium, sparingly interspersed with inspired pearls of wisdom
+ 1 Bollywood movie
Monday - Friday
- 1.5 hr of being completely unable to bend on Saturdays.
- Rest of the weekend, laundry.
On top of that, please feel free to add temperatures of at least 50˚ C, humidity levels so high the teacher often can’t see the students, because of the rising mist... and some crippling paranoia, that comes from not knowing how to effectively lead a class.
Basically, this singing tour can be quite challenging, at times.
Well, the bikram training is the equivalent of the 12 Tenors Tour put inside a snow globe, injected with meth, thrown in the air and shot with an M16, letting the aftermath unfold accompanied by a Jason Derulo’s Greatest Hits soundtrack.
Needless to say, you need friends to survive. And I was lucky enough to find quite a few (after all, it was 380 of us…).
AJ was one of them. However, because of the way training is structured (or ISN’T, as I hope to have made sufficiently clear by now), there’s very little time to find out about the people sharing all that craziness with you. You get to know them to a profound level: during those 2 months, sooner or later, everybody ends up cut wide open, through sleep deprivation, physical and emotional fatigue, frustration, blood, sweat and tears. (Especially sweat and tears. Blood, thankfully, not so much. Hyperventilation, however…).
But you don’t necessarily know a lot about them. Their personal life, their history. There’s no time for it: you’ve got to witness Hrithick Roshan’s 12-pack negotiate another love scene with a motorbike.
So it was such a privilege to be able to just sit in a quirky Luxembourg café, chatting and sharing with each other a bit more about our lives. Goes without saying, we also re-lived some of our favourite memories from TT.
Number 1 (for both of us) was of course the ‘Let’s Get Fed Dressed Up For Graduation’ story. Here’s (briefly) what happened:
On the last week of training, after almost two months spent in what felt like an incandescent physical and emotional olive-press, our own mental sanity was slowly slipping away. The pressure-cooker was ready to explode. We urgently needed some kind of release. In the midst of the inevitable drama and chaos ensuing, AJ was struck by inspiration and one day she told me: ‘We need to get you a white tuxedo for the graduation ceremony.’ I had no idea where that came from or what it would entail (pun intended) exactly . So, of course, I instantly replied: ‘Let’s do it.’
On the evening before graduation day, AJ drove me to the nearest Men's Warehouse to rent a white tuxedo. The moment I stepped out of the changing rooms, AJ looked at me and started cry-laughing so hard, she couldn’t speak. She couldn’t even breathe, to be honest. So I followed suit (LAST pun intended, I promise).
The whole situation was so ridiculous, so over the top, so unnecessary… it was exactly the purge that our poor nerves needed. All the madness of the previous 8 weeks, came flooding out in one absurdly glorious moment of fashion blasphemy.
6 years have gone by, AJ has stopped teaching bikram now, but she’s still the generous and loving powerhouse I met in San Diego, in that huge, sweltering white tent. She’s opened her own yoga studio, where she offers a variety of classes and she tells me: ‘My main job here is to make sure my students and my staff are happy. It seems to be working: the demand is so high, I’ll have to add more classes to the schedule soon.’
Despite the ups and downs we all go through at one point or another, AJ’s happy. She’s grounded. She lives in the moment. Again, to use one of her own legendary quotes: everyday, ‘she experiences the experience she’s experiencing.’
And who said bikram TT doesn’t teach you anything, after all.
http://www.yogaloft.lu
