My daughter, Stephanie, gave her final demo class last Sunday and has completed the 200-hour teacher training program at Flow Yoga Center. She has some assignments to hand in, but, for all intents and purposes, she has graduated. We picked her up after the class and went to Starbucks for coffee and pastries (nothing more because she had to leave the next morning for a meeting in Las Vegas). Since September, despite illness, fatigue, travel, new work responsibilities, a long-distance romantic relationship and having less than two years experience in yoga, she has kept her eyes on the goal, prioritized her activities and slogged through to the end.

Stephanie even pressed me into service as a practice student so she could get her sequencing down, and she got plenty of critiques from her mom, Teresa, who always has a comment. I thought she had nothing to fear from the final exam since she had an imaginative but beginner-oriented sequence of poses. Now is the question of what she wants to do the knowledge and skills acquired -- start out teaching or just focus on honing her personal practice at a higher level. Although this may not be a big a milestone as graduating from college, it gives her invaluable tools to manage her life and career, and an encouraging environment.