My Sunday class

This morning I had my second private session with my friend Denise, and this time she brought along her adorable 12 year old daughter, Andi who offered such a sweet joy and innocence to our time together. I was so happy to have her here. It seemed so perfect that she happened to join us with all my new projects formulating which support working with kids too (more on this later). It’s all happening!

I was very excited in preparing my practice with my two new yogis this morning. I spent time cleaning my house, and bringing a calm ambiance with candles and music. I made sure the room was clutter free. It was like my tiny apartment was a mini studio. 🙂 I recently spent some time carefully picking out some new yoga music (Ben Leinbach & Jai Uttal), and was looking forward to experiment with sound for the first time. And, not much to my surprise, I really enjoyed having it, and my yogis relayed that they felt in sync and at ease with it as well. The class went for 2 hours this time. Time flies. Lots of permission, a little demonstration and a few adjustments. My intention was to give instruction, but really be aware of overdoing it, especially with Andi. From what I have read about teaching kids, it should be more about having fun, and being in their bodies, and less about finding the perfect alignment- but I did throw in some thoughts on that for safety purposes.

Overall it was a great Sunday morning, and I really enjoyed having both of them join me. Yay!

First Private

On Sunday I had the pleasure of teaching my very first 90 minute private class to my dear friend Denise, who is a trained Bowen and Cranial/Sacral Body Work and Massage Therapist. This being Denise’s first yoga class, I had set up a sequence, but I was surprised that I improvised a lot from what I originally wanted to do, yet it seemed natural and seamless. Something I really enjoyed about working in a one-on-one setting was having the opportunity to make small adjustments on her, and get bits of feedback while she was in poses. It felt very personalized and fun. We laughed too, which totally dissolved all my nervousness away. This is something that makes me feel even more drawn to doing privates. It was nice to focus soley on her needs and get in tune with her. My favorite part was putting her in a restorative form of Vipariti Kirani (legs up the wall), and it was so beautiful to see her so relaxed and cozy. I felt so much gratitude in my heart afterwards for her time, her trust, and her honesty. What a beautiful Sunday.

Some things I felt: serene, comfortable, silly, focused, playful, intuitive, and creative.

 

To Teach or Not to Teach…yet

What are your thoughts on teaching now versus when you started this course?

I will teach someday, I know that. I am just not sure when I will be ready to teach. I feel like I should be asking some deeper questions, but I honestly don’t know what to ask other than, what could work on most to become a stronger teacher/student? Right now I feel like I have barely had any time to let all this stuff sink in even over the course of 5 months. It’s a lifetime of information, and I feel like the only way to ingest it is to actually go over it again, and start applying what I have learned to my own practice along with beginning to teach friends. I am at a place in my life right now where I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, I have visions of what I will become, but I am trying to balance that with accepting the beginners mind.

After Havi came, I felt like a million bucks. I came home with a smile, thinking “I can do anything.” I thought everything was going to fall into place and I was going to remember all the wonderful things I have learned in training, and if I didn’t I would still be ok. I was thinking “Me and all my fears, we are going to be ok?”. I had a nice afterglow that lasted about 20 minutes till I talked about it with someone who flattened me out and gave me a taste of logic-pie. As much as I know he is right about a lot, (I need to know my poses back and forth, I need to be able to be clear, and I need to be able to recall information and not stutter through a class), but to me it’s more about him having faith in me, and I in myself. That’s what got me the most. I felt like squashed of my confidence, since its in such a fragile state. Maybe I am the kind of girl that needs some sugar coating to get me through the darker moments. Right now I need a lot of encouragement and I guess I am expecting it, and getting the opposite is painful. I still have a lot of fear in my throat, and it’s coming and going in waves. On one hand I want to accept it because that’s apart of me, but I want to change it and get better. This goes all the way back to lovingkindness- how can I accept, but still change?

In the same article, Mary talks about a few things that really opened my eyes. She says to ‘Wait until you feel ready(whenever that is???)…’I would recommend assisting or following a respected teacher around for a couple of years’(I think-a couple of years?holy shit! That’s a great idea, I would love to continue to assist after this course. ).”

I don’t want to be another teacher that ‘does more harm than good’. And right now, I wish I had more time to dedicate to this, but I am fighting with the reality that I have a pretty full life. I am doing my best, but I don’t know if it’s possible for me to work full time as a teacher and become a yoga teacher. How do people do that?? I want to say that I can, but this has been the most challenging year of my life! And I am so tired.

I am thinking that I will be teaching friends for a while right now, and hopefully assisting when I can. In my heart I know that this will take more time than I had originally imagined, and that I need to keep working at it, and stay in my practice. I have never been so immersed in something before. I have never loved a subject more than this before. Yoga has taught me so much about my life, and I know I am never going to be ‘done’. I can’t imagine not being teacher, or letting go of the practice, especially all the yamas and niyamas.

I realize that my biggest obstacle are the limitations I put on myself. I can come up with so many excuses, so many victimizing thoughts, but I notice them now. I see clearly what I am doing. I forget which article it was in, but in this last packet of articles someone wrote about how they still had these ‘issues’ come up in their behavior, but the difference was that now they noticed it. That’s the first step, the being aware, right? So I am going to keep taking those steps, and hopefully one day (sooner than later, I hope), I will be ready!