I barely slept last night. As I walked to the train through a hailstorm with a bag full of yoga clothes and an empty stomach, I passed hundreds of people on their way to work in Bergen. “I should have just been a post woman. He looks like he’s happy to go to work in a suit selling apartments”, I thought to myself. “Why did I pick a profession where I have to stand half naked in front of people and talk for 90 minutes straight?” Don’t get me wrong, I love not wearing pants and I can talk all day, but my mind chatter was trying to convince me that I made all the wrong decisions the last months, and I certainly should not be wasting my time teaching yoga. A profession where I can hide in an office sounded pretty appealing at that exact moment.

A few minutes later, a song popped on my headphones that reminded me of driving through the winding hills of Montecito with my fellow yogis, laughing our faces off at the ridiculous feelings that came up during training. Who’s turn would it be to breakdown today, we would wonder? Would we ever figure out how to memorize one posture and move onto the next without forgetting everything we learned the day before? Can’t we be finished before 10 pm just once this week? And then we would hear it…”trust the process.”

Slowly I started to remember why I was forcing myself to teach as I bounced along to the music. I love this practice and I want to give it to others. Ultimately, I want people to be happy and I feel this is a fast track to a better and more fulfilling life. And then it happened. I taught my first real public class in Bergen, at the studio where I will most likely teach hundreds, maybe thousands of classes. I fell in love and everything made more sense. While the process was gradual, today I can celebrate that a-ha moment where all the training, blood (ok, there was no blood), sweat (loads of that), and tears (a few) paid off and I can finally say that as much as I abhorred the statement during training, I now trust the *&^%$# process. Everything was different in front of people that really needed my guidance and enthusiasm. I had no choice but to do a proper job.

During the eight wonderful, yet grueling weeks at the HotTT, I waited impatiently to feel what my expectations were for teacher training. I made lifelong friends, I challenged myself physically, I expanded my mind, and I challenged former opinions and thoughts. However, I did not feel like a teacher until today when I plain and simply wanted nothing more than the new students in the class to get acquainted with and love yoga as much as I do. I want them to reap the benefits the same way I have. Zefea made mention of how things we have learned would make more sense in hindsight, as they often do, but I hope this is just the tip of the iceberg. When I saw their sweaty, smiling faces come out of the room explaining how great they felt, my heart grew. They had no idea how much they were giving back to me with their kind words.

I have done a lot on this earth in my 33 years, and while I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself, I feel like something has just begun today and that pushing myself through teacher training with Evolation was one of the best decisions I ever made.

Kristen Steiner

Kristen discovered yoga in 2004 while studying abroad in Norway. Moving back to Norway permanently in 2007, she steadily picked up her practice while getting her Master's degree in Anthropology. In 2014 she attended the first HotTT 500 hour training and went back to teach at two different studios in Norway.