What happened in the waiting

My last blog post was 2 years, 4 months and 26 days ago. A lot has happened in that time: we added our second son, my role at work changed, we moved to another house on the camp property where we live, my husband got a new job and we now work together, we added our third son, our oldest started preschool… plus some other fun updates that I will share in a bit. It’s been quite the journey over the past 2+ years!

I gave an update about my business and yoga practice in my last blog post, as well as a glimpse into some dreams that were beginning to stir in my heart. The running theme of that post was “not yet, just wait”. So I guess today, as I sip my bone broth and sit in my shockingly quiet living room before the house wakes up, I’ll tell you a little bit about what happened in the waiting.

During my pregnancy with our second son, I started my 300-hour yoga teacher training and a couple days before he was born, in January 2022, I submitted my final assignment and while on maternity leave, I received my official certificate of completion. From there, I decided to join the Yoga Alliance registry of yoga teachers, which officially made me both a Certified and Registered 500-hour yoga teacher (RYT-500).

To be completely transparent, I didn’t do much with my yoga practice (and did nothing with my yoga business) while my second son was an infant. Mostly due to the fact that we unexpectedly became pregnant with our third son, when our second was just 5 months old. The third pregnancy threw us for a loop and was the hardest on my body. That pregnancy looked a lot like taking life slow, resting daily and extending a ton of grace to myself for not being able to accomplish every single task every single day.

It was a challenging season, but I learned a lot about expectations and even more about grace.

This was the only pregnancy where I decided to extend my maternity leave and I actually ended up adding 2 weeks of vacation time before my due date to rest, prepare and take a mental break from work. During that 2+ weeks of anticipating our third son’s arrival, I decided to check out online specialty yoga certifications.  I looked at an array of programs but ultimately met myself right where I was and decided to complete a postnatal yoga certification. I finished this program in about a week and was pleasantly surprised at how much it impacted my preparation for a newborn and postpartum recovery.  

My third maternity leave was like neither of my previous ones – my first being incredibly challenging and my second being incredibly smooth. Having 3 kids under the age of 4, including a newborn, is a crazy concept but having been through it twice before, I found my threshold for exhaustion to be incredibly high, along with my ambitions to get out of the house and to feel “normal”. So when my third son was 4 days old, my mom and I took them to the aquarium. My pelvic floor needed a week to recover from that adventure but it was through that experience that I started to think: “Maybe I do need community after all….”

While on my maternity leave, I couldn’t shake the pull toward getting a children’s yoga certification. This in itself caught me by surprise because I’ve never been a kid person. I like my own kids and I enjoy youth and young adult ministry, but never really felt connected to children’s ministry or to other kids. But if there’s anything I’ve learned over the past several years, it’s to just surrender to the journey and let the pieces come together on their own timeline. Needless to say, I completed the children’s yoga certification with a 4 year old and 14 month old running around, and a newborn asleep in my lap.  

While pregnant with my third, I ended up completing a basic skills, coach approach skills training course through my job. In the spirit of continuing education, I decided to also sign up for follow up courses – advanced skills and coaching of groups & teams, not realizing that the first two weeks of sessions would take place at the end of my maternity leave. Being the achiever type, I decided to take the courses anyway and let me tell you, it changed my life.

I mentioned in my previous blog that I had been dreaming and exploring the idea of additional yoga certifications, as well as a holistic health coaching certification. The concept of holistic health coaching wasn’t new to me – I had been working with a health coach since 2018 and the work had a huge impact on my journey. I was interested in the certification program from the very beginning but it was a large financial investment and something that I had a hard time justifying spending money on… that is, until one of my classmates coached me to move past my fears, anxiety, self-doubt and negative self-talk. I logged out of class that day and immediately signed up for the Health Coach Training Program through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition.

In between registration and the start of the holistic health coaching program, I enrolled in two other specialty yoga certification programs. One being adaptive yoga – yoga for every body and one being yin yoga – a deep tissue, contemplative practice. I haven’t finished either program yet but they’re on the timeline for the second half of this year! 

For the past seven months, I have logged on each week to work on a holistic health and coaching module for the Health Coach Training Program. I have learned about mental, emotional, physical and spiritual health. I have done a deep dive into 12 areas of life, which accumulate to the health of a person. I have read, listened, taken notes, completed exams, worked with practice “clients” to complete health histories and coaching sessions, attended online small groups and completed deeply personal homework assignments… and I’m only 55% done the program! In addition to the cultivation of knowledge and skills, I have also developed a true dedication to learning, growing and investing in my own continuing education regularly.

This new, bold investment in myself also sparked a new sense of bravery in my soul and I did something this year that I never would have considered in the past – I signed up for an event, in another part of the country, that I traveled to / from and attended by myself.

This January, I attended a yoga teacher event, the Christian Yoga Teacher Revival, all by myself. Even though I’m an only child and a strong independent woman, traveling along has never been on my list of life interests or goals. Initially I registered for this event in April 2023 thinking it was another retreat that I could eventually talk someone into attending with me… little did I know where I would be in my journey of yoga, holistic wellness and creativity 9 months later. I needed to go this event and I needed to go by myself this year.

At CYT, I ate nourishing foods, slept 8+ hours per night, practiced yoga daily, gained invaluable knowledge through workshops, filled my soul through worship, spent quiet time reflecting at the beach and even received 1-1 business coaching from one of my favorite people. By the end of the weekend, I felt revived, rejuvenated and like I finally had the clarity that I had been longing for since starting my business in 2020. The clarity and direction that I received during this week away was not in the direction that I expected or had been working on but yet, it makes so much sense and it feels so right.

My 2024 is going to be a crazy one. We are once again moving… in fact, we’re actually buying a house! In a place that is incredible special, both in its own right and to our family. Our oldest will be starting kindergarten. We are reinvesting in all aspects of our health and embracing every step of that journey as it comes. And in a fun twist of events, I suddenly have found myself with several events on my business calendar for the first quarter of this year! From holistic wellness workshops for leaders to a wellness & yoga retreat for a sorority to some other budding opportunities this year – I am hearing a couple of things loud and clear:

Surrender to the journey.

Meet people where they are.

Teach them about grace – for self and for others.

Guide them into community.

I’m excited to share more about my journey, my family’s journey, my yoga practice, my yoga and health coaching business and the community that I feel led to build as we step into a new season.

Thankful for this journey of wholeness and to be navigating our whole journey, together.