HOW TEACHING MY LAST YOGA CLASS BECAME CEREMONY

What if You Don’t Slam that Door But Close it With Glitz?

I recently taught my last public yoga class after 15 years of teaching. This class organically grew into a ceremony of rituals. By the end, my heart was lit up and my spirit was set free to pursue what fires me up.

This 75 minutes on an ordinary Thursday morning in March represented all the classes before, all the hours of training, all the amazing students I got to teach, all my inspiring teachers, all the struggles and joys, all that eventually led me to where I am today, as healer, as leader of women’s sacred circles.

I approached this last class as sacred. It was the door I needed to intentionally close to step from one passage into another.

Like many things that have come to an end in my life, my typical way would be to just end it and push on to the next thing…as if all the years, all the trainings, all the hours spent building my yoga business didn’t matter.

Not this time! I was determined to do it differently with this ending. No more dismissing. No more playing it down. No more rushing through with my eyes closed like I do hurling down a roller-coaster.

You know the endings in your life. The graduation. The divorce. The move. The job. The relationship. The newly empty nest. The career. The season. The year. The TV show finale. The deaths. The old ways, old roles, loved but unhealthy habits.

How do you end the things in your life, whether big or small?

Perhaps you even play down the little deaths in your life.

Most typically we do nothing special beyond getting the job done…the tasks at hand, the passing on to others, the packing up, at most a toast of champagne as we’re walking out that door.

What if there was a different way to close the doors on the passages of our life?

I needed to honor the end of this phase of my life, to really bring closure and clear ending, especially because of all the second-guessing I went through. I needed to do it in a way that made it sacred for me. I had been on the healing path long enough to know that I was worthy of doing this for myself, regardless of what anyone may think.

So, as with so many other things in my life, I let Spirit guide me, with no idea how this was going to play out. As I began to consider how I would teach this last class I was led to a drawer that had once been in my first yoga space (in my living room) for my first three years while my young ones slept upstairs. I gathered a variety of special trinkets gifted to me by students, plus a notebook filled with my very first student rosters and lesson plans.

I also plucked off a bookshelf my first book of yoga poetry (by Danna Faulds) and a meditations book, both well-worn and dog-eared from those early nervous years when inspiration was harder to come by.

At the last minute I brought items representing what I’m stepping more fully into over the last several years…a candle and scarf, symbolizing the sacred circles I am leading with a passion I once taught yoga with.

With the altar assembled before my mat, the candle lit, Spirit called in, what began as typical yoga poses and stretches soon became effortlessly something more. Like all my yoga classes these last years I tended to bring the unexpected, the atypical…perhaps scaring off those just walking in off the streets and yet what I learned over the years was no matter what other teachers were teaching or what students were expecting, just stay true to myself.

Trusting in my higher self, this class was like no other. In between some poses I shared stories of my early years, stories about first teaching in that very studio 9 years ago, and all the other many places I took my yoga passion.

At the end, after the class bowed with Namaste, I invited them to choose a trinket from the altar which they gladly did…this a symbol of the sweet sadness of letting go I myself was experiencing.

What a closing ceremony, filled with rich ritual. Not on any scale like the Olympics yet the fireworks within me gleamed. I closed out this phase of my life, with grace, with honor, with pleasure. It was a celebration of all that I had learned and experienced, of all the gifts I had gained…all bringing me to this point in my life.

By closing one door fully and intentionally, we invite a new door to open. For me this closing gave me sparkly wings to fly magically through this door! I realized on my way through it had been closed a while.

You too can create your own unique ceremony for whatever the ending in your life. They are all big and they all deserve a special honoring.

Get my free guide “How to Create Your Own Closing Ceremony” here.