Day 18 - Saturdays

When one chooses to be a yoga teacher, one has to accept the fact that they will work whilst other people are having fun. It's just the way of things. There's no point running a yoga class at 9.30am on a Monday morning as very few people will have the luxury of turning up!

Working evenings never really bothers me but there is something about a Saturday morning -- a feeling of sanctity that I presume is left over from doing the Monday to Friday 9 to 5 grind for so many years. Saturday mornings used to be a time for long lie ins and cooked breakfast and reading the papers and generally doing as little as possible.

These days my Saturday mornings are spent in the company of between 6 and 8 pregnant women! If you'd told me two years ago that this would be the case I would have thought you quite mad, but in fact once I get over the intial shock of getting up early on a Saturday and preparing for the class, I think my pregnancy yoga class is my favourite to teach.

Which is probably an odd statement coming from somebody who has never been, nor has any intention to be pregnant!

Ancient wisdom seperates the stages of womanhood into: maiden, mother, crone (no, I don't particularly like the word crone either -- how about wise woman?). I guess at 34 I'm well into that "mother" aspect of womanhood. However, this does not necessarily incorporate having children of one's own. There are so many ways that this nuturing side of womanhood can be expressed:- as teachers, as childcarers, as midwives.... as pregnancy and postnatal yoga teachers.

I play a small part in helping quite a lot of women bring their little ones into the world. And that is an amazing thing.