Walking In With Open Eyes: Before My 300-Hour Yoga Teacher Training

Jade Canavan · Inner Lifetime, Lincoln · www.innerlifetime.com

A note before we begin: this post touches on PMDD, anxiety and the after-effects of past trauma. I don’t go into detail here — the fuller story, which includes childhood abuse, sexual assault and narcissistic abuse, is in Where It All Began. Please read gently, and step away whenever you need to. 🤍

I’m writing this with a slightly wobbly nervous system.

Very soon I begin my 300-hour yoga teacher training. I haven’t done a single hour of it yet — and already I can feel things shifting. A fluttering heart. Lighter sleep. A low hum of anxiety that I’ve learnt to recognise as my body quietly telling me: something is stirring within.

Because I’ve been here before. Four years ago I completed my 200-hour training, an experience that cracked me open in ways I was nowhere near prepared for — but so badly needed. I’ve done a number of online courses since, but it’s different when you’re fully immersed, away from day-to-day distractions and home comforts. So many things surfaced that I thought I’d dealt with, neatly packed away, or never even knew were there.

This time is different. This time I’m walking in with open eyes. I’ve learnt so much about myself since then, and come through so much more. I know what this kind of work asks of you — and I’m choosing it anyway. A determined commitment, open to whatever unfurls.

But I’m a little scared — or maybe nervous is a better word for it. And I want to be honest about that. Going in with open eyes means I know how big this journey is going to be for me. It will be different from last time, and probably deeper, because of who I am today: deeply reflective, a true believer in all things spiritual, and feeling a deep connection to everything around me.

Please don’t read this as doom and gloom, though. I’m not only anxious — I’m so excited. Excited to do the work. Excited to connect with like-minded souls. Excited to learn. And excited to do something so fundamental that I know I will come back stronger and better for it.

Both of those things are true at once. Scared and excited. I’m learning that this is usually how the important things feel. I’m also learning that feeling several things at once can be a big contributor to overwhelm, confusion and feeling lost — which, without realising it, was my constant state before my 200-hour training in 2022. Yoga has helped me understand that feeling several things at once — sometimes even opposite emotions — isn’t just possible, it’s normal. We are complex beings, and of course we have the capacity for it.

So I’ve decided to do something a bit vulnerable. I’m going to write about this training as I go — partly because I wish I’d kept a diary last time, something to help me remember the details. It was such a journey. This is part one — the before. The nerves, the fears, the things already rising to the surface. And over the next few months we’ll see how it unfolds, together.

This is the first of those blogs, and the only one that will go out to everyone. Future diary instalments will only go to those who sign up to follow the journey — so you won’t get bombarded.

Exhausting and exhilarating. Excruciating and liberating.

That’s the most honest way I can describe what I anticipate lies ahead. There will be highs and there will be lows, often on the same day. That’s certainly how my 200-hour training felt.

Because that’s what can happen when we really work with ourselves — especially those of us who have experienced trauma, or spent a lifetime living for other people. We start to free whatever has been suppressed. Energy that has been stuck for years begins to move again. And sometimes that means meeting old pain face to face — sitting with it, feeling it, even briefly reliving it. Which, of course, isn’t pleasant — but I believe it’s essential if we want to move forward.

It’s a very particular kind of discomfort. The kind that tricks you into believing it will never end. That if you stop distracting yourself and let it in, it will sink right down into your depths and hold you there, a prisoner. Suffocated by it. Stuck.

But here’s what experience has taught me, over and over again: the moment we stop fighting it — the moment we surrender and give ourselves to it — it eases.

That is the part I think so many people struggle with in yoga. And if I’m honest, I think it’s part of why the reformer Pilates boom and the gym membership do better. There is nothing wrong with either — move your body in whatever way you love. I love my own gym sessions. And yes, part of that is getting into shape — but my relationship with the gym is much more about building a stronger body to maintain my health and improve my energy levels, which it really has, significantly.

But I do think we’ve been programmed, as a society, to focus on how we look rather than how we feel. And a practice that asks you to turn inwards, rather than tone up, can be a much harder sell.

And the minute you call yoga a spiritual practice, some people’s knees jerk. What’s that waffle? That woo-woo stuff isn’t for me.

I don’t resent anyone for that. Truly. Because I was that person for many years.

“Nah, babe.”

I had a friend who encouraged me for years to try yoga. She is a beautiful soul, but sadly our paths took us in different directions. She could clearly see that I needed it, and how much I would benefit from it — and I see that in so many people now, too. She never pushed me, though. She just dropped it in, every now and then. And every single time, my answer was some version of: nah, babe.

Funny, really, looking back. I was so sure it wasn’t for me. Too busy. But really, it was just unfamiliar, uncomfortable, and probably not the right time. The one time I did try it, I felt bored and unsettled and just wanted to get up and leave. That was my resistance — completely unconscious.

I truly believe yoga finds us when the time is right. It can’t be forced on anyone — and the very idea of pushing yoga on someone goes against its whole essence and philosophy. It’s an invitation, never a sales pitch.

That’s how I see what I do now, too. It doesn’t really feel like a career to me — more like a journey of sharing this practice with as many people as I can. It just so happens that I live in a world where I can’t survive without money. If it were possible, I would do what I do for free.

Yoga found me when I was brought to my knees. When I had lost so much of what I thought made up my identity — relationships, friendships, family, my career, my physical health. All of it, at once, or close enough that it felt that way.

What I found on the mat was a practice that returned me to myself. It was uncharted territory — new, unfamiliar — but gosh, what an experience it has all been.

Now, I know how that might sound. There was a time when I would have rolled my eyes at those words too. I thought I had it all figured out — or at least, I could see the path my life was going to take. But life has a way of humbling us. (Understatement of the year, she types, smiling.)

I thought I was a reflective, career-driven, take-no-nonsense woman. I was strong, loyal and protective. I loved that my body looked in good shape. I had it together, considering my background — or at least I looked like I did. Or maybe I just told myself I did.

And this story was a distraction. A very convincing one. It kept me from seeing how rarely I was actually choosing myself. How much I was living the life I thought I should live, rather than slowing down long enough to unpack the conditioning and the expectations — and to start exploring, gently and from a very vulnerable place, who I really am underneath it all.

If you don’t know what “returning to yourself” means, or it doesn’t land because you’re living the life you think you’re in control of — the one you thought you wanted — then why would you try something like this? I understand that completely. But yoga enables an unravelling of conditioning, and through that unravelling, it shows us what’s beneath it all. And I promise there is a part of you under there, shining bright, waiting for you. You don’t have to be unhappy or struggling to start yoga — just curious about yourself. For me, I was so hell-bent and stubborn about pushing myself in everything (unconsciously so) that it wasn’t curiosity that brought me to yoga. It was rock bottom, and a desperate attempt to try anything to get better.

I thought I knew myself. Put simply, I didn’t.

That exploration is what I want to talk about — because when you start to unravel, it can be really uncomfortable. The comfort falls away, and we crave the familiar. I still battle with discomfort every single day, just like everybody else. The difference now is that I’m aware of it.

I’ve written about everything that came before — my childhood, the experiences I had to unravel, and the relationship that became my ultimate test — in Where It All Began. If you’d like the backstory, start there.

PMDD, my unwelcome messenger

I’ve just come out of a heavy PMDD cycle, so this is very fresh. I suspect it’s because of all of this stuff coming up to the surface.

I used to hate my PMDD. And don’t get me wrong — I still don’t enjoy it. Not even a little. But something has shifted in how I meet it. Rather than simply feeling sorry for myself, or getting frustrated that I have this condition, I’ve started to treat it as a messenger. It shows me where I’m feeling off. So I go into deep reflection and ask: what am I feeling? Why am I feeling this? Where do I feel it? What is happening in my life right now that’s bringing up this resentment, this sadness, this anxiety, this fatigue?

For so long, my kindness, my compassion, my vulnerability and my body were taken advantage of. And I didn’t take care of myself — I own that part. I well and truly burnt the candle at both ends: worked hard, played harder. I didn’t know my limits. Limits? What were they? So now, for the first time in my life, I’m catching up. I’m nurturing myself, listening to my own needs, spreading my wings and seeing where they take me.

But PMDD still finds the old fears. When I’m hormonal (usually in the build-up to my cycle — damn that rising progesterone), my hormones tap me on the shoulder: hey, don’t forget about this! The financial worry about my future. Having had to start again from scratch in my mid-thirties — and having chosen a career for the love of what I do, rather than for financial gain. The business. And the old traumas, which don’t affect me every day anymore, but can come back to the surface at certain times of the month. Not every month, though. They usually sneak up when something else is already bothering me, or when I’m low on energy, upset or worried — as if they think, hey guys, she’s down, let’s pile on. And that is exactly what negative thoughts and emotions do: they feed each other. If you aren’t careful, before you know it you’re pulled deep into a rollercoaster of everything difficult and uncomfortable. That’s why awareness and conscious living are so important — and yoga helps with both. The more we watch our thoughts and emotions, the more we recognise that we are not them. We don’t have to spiral, and we can stop ourselves from being pulled into that negative vortex.

A big one for me is telling the difference between a trauma response, fear and reality. Is it OK to be annoyed at ‘x’, or am I bringing a trauma trigger from ‘y’ into it? So yes, I think a lot — but consciously, unpacking and working through it all. I’m a Virgo, and there’s a perfectionist streak in me. I put myself under a lot of pressure and I want to get things right. What happened has happened; now I’m choosing who I want to be, and what energy I bring to day-to-day life.

Those triggers still show up — especially in my relationship, where old fears can flare up out of nowhere. Here’s the liberating part though- because I’m aware of them now, I don’t react the way I used to: the reactive moods that felt so much bigger than they needed to be, letting things burrow inside while holding in my truth, the quick remarks I’d regret afterwards. Awareness holds me back from the old response. But then I find myself stuck, because it’s all so complicated that I can’t put into words how I feel.

I’m learning that this is part of it too. Not reacting is new. Not having the words yet is new. Maybe the stuck place is simply the gap between the old me and whoever I’m becoming.

One thing that’s really helping me find the words is talking them out. About six months ago, I started recording video diaries — just for me. Not all of them are about the heavy stuff, either. One is me getting emotional about a video of scientists pouring cement into an ants’ nest to reveal its structure, while people insisted it had been abandoned — even though you could see ants all around it. It hit me hard. And rather than keep it stuck inside me, I needed to say what I thought out loud.

So now I talk to myself (yes, you read that right), just to get it out. I can really recommend it. It’s a brilliant outlet — a bit like journaling, but without having to write a thing!

And sometimes the questions go bigger. Am I ever going to live a life where PMDD doesn’t drag me into these dark corners? What is my future going to look like? Will I ever be “fully healed”? Will I always feel things so strongly? That last one is big. The more I practise awareness, and the deeper I go into this world of recognising connection, the more strongly I feel everything.

Sometimes, too, the ego pulls me in and tells me I’m a failure. That by this ripe old age of 39, I should have so much more to show for myself. That I am to blame. That I have been silly and naive, and should have known better. But when those thoughts creep in, I can identify them for what they are: ego. Conditioning. Not who I am.

And then I ask a different question. What if that was deliberate? What if losing everything was the thing that finally made me surrender to this life — and commit, properly, to this path?

I don’t always have an answer. But I notice I feel very differently depending on which question I choose to ask.

I don’t know when — or if — I’ll ever be fully healed. Or even whether that’s what I should be aiming for. What I want is a peaceful life: peace on the inside — in my head, my heart and my soul — and peace on the outside, in who I spend my time with and where.

I’m committing to the healing anyway, because I don’t want my unhealed parts to spill out into the world. Pain that isn’t faced has a way of leaking out — into how we speak to people, how we react, and what we pass on. I’ve seen first-hand what happens when someone never meets their own shadows, and I don’t want my trauma to become something that hurts anybody else.

I believe the world needs more of us to face our shadows: to put down the heaviness, to become more aware, and to make conscious choices about what we bring into the world. I can’t change the whole world, or the pain that’s outside my control. But I can tend to my inner world — and pay attention to the things in my outer world that feed me rather than drain me.

Leaving my safety blanket

There’s a much more everyday fear in all of this, too. I’m excited about this training — and I’m worried about being away from the studio.

I won’t have control. Even though I know, deep down, that control is an illusion. It always was.

The studio has become such a safe space for me — and, I hope, for some of you too. Stepping away from it feels like putting down my safety blanket.

Then there are my dogs, who are a huge part of my sense of safety. I think it comes back to that need for unconditional love I touched on in Where It All Began — so leaving them feels scary too. And I’m hoping my daughter copes, as this will be the longest we’ve ever been apart. Although, if I know her the way I think I do, she’ll live her best life and make the most of the time with her friends. She’s also got an amazing trip coming up with some of her besties while I’m away, so I doubt she’ll be thinking of dear old mum much!

So yes, my mind has been BUSY — which has pushed me into more yoga practice, to regulate and come back to the awareness behind the thoughts and emotions.

We all have the things that bring us comfort. The people, places and routines that ground us. And for six weeks, I’m stepping away from nearly all of mine at once. Everything except yoga — because yoga is my sanctuary too, and I’ll be diving deep into it.

So when you think, oh lovely, six weeks away — yes, it is going to be wonderful, and I am so grateful for the opportunity. I’m going somewhere beautiful, for myself and for my future.

But it isn’t a holiday. There will be moments when I’m in the trenches, digging deep and shifting some heavy stuff. And there will be moments of real joy, connection and lightness too. It won’t be all hard work — just honest work.

And I think this is what committing to yourself actually looks like. Taking the chance. Not letting old programming or fear make the decision for you. Taking the light, and working with the dark corners within.

As I write this, I fly tomorrow. And it’s made me think about how much my relationship with travelling on my own has changed.

The first time I ever travelled by myself was in 2022, to a yoga retreat in Costa Rica. I was so nervous. Anxious. Honestly? I was bricking it. Now, I love travelling solo. Something I’d never done until my mid-thirties has become something I really enjoy — and I would never have discovered that if I hadn’t pushed myself out of my comfort zone.

Fear has held me back so many times in my life. So now, when I feel fear, I push myself through it. (That would probably be a different story if I were about to jump out of a plane — but hey, maybe that’s one to explore in the future.) This blog, and the one before it, are part of that. I don’t feel like I owe my truth to anyone, but I do owe it to myself to release it. And if it helps or inspires anybody along the way — win-win.

Discomfort and growth travel together

If there’s one thing I want you to take from this, it’s that discomfort and growth happen in parallel. They are not opposites. One is very often the sign of the other.

And when we stop moving — when we stagnate, stay stuck, keep everything packed down tightly — it doesn’t just disappear. It can show up as symptoms. In the body, in our sleep, in our moods, in our relationships. Something, somewhere, starts asking for our attention.

But I want to be really clear: I am not telling or asking you to change. That isn’t my place, and it isn’t how yoga works. You are allowed to be exactly where you are.

What yoga can offer is an invitation to get curious.

So here I am

Scared. Excited. Nervous system slightly all over the place. Going in with open eyes anyway.

I’ll be writing as I go — the hard days, the breakthroughs, the bits that make me laugh and the bits that floor me. Not a polished highlight reel — that’s not my style. The real journey, and the honest middle of it. I’d love for you to come along with me, and maybe see a little of your own journey in mine.

And whatever I discover over the coming months, it all comes back to the mat at Inner Lifetime — and to you.

Follow The 300-Hour Diaries. If you’d like each new instalment sent straight to your inbox, sign up below.

Before I go, I’ll leave you with a few questions to help with that inner enquiry...

If you’re not feeling OK — a few questions to sit with

You don’t need to answer them all. You don’t need to do anything with the answers. Grab a cup of tea, pick one or two that catch your eye, and simply notice what comes up.

1. When did I last feel properly at ease in my body — not how it looked, but how it felt?

2. What do I reach for the moment discomfort turns up? My phone, a glass of wine, busyness, scrolling, other people’s problems?

3. What might happen if I let myself feel this for five minutes, without trying to fix it or make it go away?

4. Whose voice is the “should” in my head? Is it actually mine?

5. What grounds me — and am I leaning on it, or hiding behind it?

6. What am I afraid would happen if I chose myself, just once, on purpose?

7. If my tiredness, my irritability or my restlessness could talk, what would they be asking me for?

8. What is one small, gentle thing I could do this week that is only for me?

   
   

If what comes up feels too heavy to hold on your own, please don’t hold it on your own. Talk to a friend, your GP, or one of the organisations listed at the bottom of this post.

What has helped me along the way

And finally, I want to share some of the things that have helped me most over the last few years. This isn’t a prescription — just what has worked for me. Take whatever resonates, and leave the rest.

Yoga — whatever my energy needs that day. Some days that’s a flowing, energising practice. Other days it’s yin, restorative or yoga nidra. Sometimes it’s simply sitting in meditation, sometimes it’s movement, and sometimes it’s breathwork. Learning to ask “what do I need today?” rather than “what should I be doing?” has been a practice in itself.

Living the yamas — especially non-harming towards myself. The yamas are yoga’s ethical guidelines, and the first, ahimsa, means non-harming. We tend to think of that as how we treat other people. For me, the biggest lesson has been non-harming towards myself — my self-talk, how hard I push, and how quickly I used to blame myself.

Video diaries. As I mentioned, talking things out loud — even just to my phone — helps me find the words for feelings that would otherwise stay stuck.

Journaling on paper. If video diaries don’t feel right, pen and paper can be wonderful. It can feel more mindful, and somehow a little less heavy.

Talking with safe friends. A small handful of people I trust, who listen without judging or trying to fix me. Finding my people wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t had the strength to walk away from places that no longer felt right. So if you feel like you don’t have anybody safe to talk to, get curious about that too. Is it that they aren’t safe — or is that a safety net of your own? You’ll know.

Recording my own affirmations. I use an app called ThinkUp, which lets you record affirmations in your own voice. Whenever I caught myself stating something negative as if it were fact — I am ugly, I am weak, I am to blame — I made myself record the very opposite: I am beautiful, just as I am. I am so strong, and I have overcome everything life has thrown at me. I am responsible for my behaviour and how I handle things, not for the things done to me. Hearing my own voice say those words, again and again, has slowly helped to rewrite the story. This is neuroplasticity: taking back control of how your brain thinks. Most of our thoughts are negative, unconscious and on repeat. So the more we speak positive words consciously, the more we rewrite them — and help to fill the unconscious (which, for most of us, takes up a much larger space within) with light, peace and love.

Opening up — even if it’s only to yourself. Saying it out loud, writing it down, or simply admitting it in your own head. Naming something takes away some of its power.

Getting outside. Fresh air, a walk with the dogs, noticing the seasons change. Nature has a way of putting things back into perspective. No phone, no AirPods — just one step in front of the other, listening to the sounds around me and feeling the breeze against my skin. Taking in the views and the scents. Coming back to my senses, in the moment.

Professional support. Some things are too heavy to carry alone. If you’re holding something like I was, a trauma-informed therapist or counsellor can help in ways a blog — or even a yoga class — never can. There is no shame in asking for help. It’s one of the bravest things you can do.

None of these are magic fixes. But together, they have helped me to feel things fully — and to let them move through me, rather than get stuck.

Come As You Are

Inner Lifetime is a beginner-friendly yoga studio in Lincoln. If yoga has been quietly calling you — or if a friend has been nudging you for years and you’ve been saying nah, babe — your first class is completely free. No experience needed, no flexibility required, and nobody will ask you what brought you.

Use code 1STCLASSFREE_IL when you book.

Inner Lifetime, Unit 3, 421 Newark Rd, Lincoln LN6 8RS