Tags
frowny, rainbow coloured love, serious, Shadow Yoga, Simon Borg-Olivier, Yoga, yoga teacher breakup, yoga teaching
Friday night's sunset, captured as I got off the train. Glorious!
Confession: since the whole Yoga Teacher Breakup Debacle, I haven’t been to any yoga classes. Instead, I’ve just been doing my own practice and teaching, and kinda getting over the sting of what happened.
It’s nasty when things go wrong with something you hold so close to your heart, like I do (and I’m sure many of y’all do) with yoga. And it took me a while to see that clearly, something about me pushed that particular yoga teacher’s buttons to the point that she had a very unpleasant (and rude) reaction. On top of that, she wasn’t any good at apologising or admitting her mistakes.
So, she lost a regular and committed student and I lost a place to practice a form of yoga I love doing. I haven’t actually done any Shadow Yoga since then either. I need for the situation to lose its taint and for me to feel a natural pull towards doing it again. Luckily, I love all kinds of yoga so that’s not a problem!
But today I’ve broken my yoga teacher fast and I’m feeling the love. LOVE! So. Much. Love.
A couple of weeks ago, someone mentioned to me that Simon Borg-Olivier was going to be in Melbourne this weekend. As I’ve previously mentioned, he was my very first ever yoga teacher in Sydney. My introduction to the beginning of the rest of my life – not that I knew it at the time!
So I tracked down his workshop and signed up as quickly as I could. Today’s session was a half day – an hour long talk, followed by a demonstration of his awesome yoga skills and then three hours of practice. Delicious!
I’m not sure exactly how long Simon has been teaching, but I think he said he’s been practicing for around 40 years. The dude is also a qualified physiotherapist and is insanely knowledgeable about the body. I’ll have much more to say about the workshop after tomorrow’s all-day session (HUZZAH!), but for now I’ll say that he has lots of wonderful yoga goodness going on.
Today, what impressed me most is that despite his years and years of teaching and really, being one of the biggest stars in the Australian yoga world… he’s just so human. Before and after the workshop, Simon made a point of introducing himself to as many people as he could, shaking their hand and having little chats. So lovely and inclusive.
After today’s session, he came up to me to say hello and I explained that I’d taken his classes a good 12 years ago. He had also come across this blog and left a comment on one of my posts last year, and when I told him I was the blogger in question he remembered and was so sweet about it.
It’s human nature to compare and contrast things, and I can’t help but notice the vast differences between his teaching style (warm, inviting, fun, engaging) and the woman I was learning Shadow Yoga from (serious, sharp, strict, harsh). What was I thinking?!
That Yoga Teacher Breakup Debacle was one of the best things that’s happened to me this year. Even though I currently don’t have access to that style of yoga, I’m so very glad to be out of that woman’s classes!
You see, I like my yoga all heart-centered and fun, filled with rainbow-coloured love. Not Nazi-harsh and mean! I’m just not that kind of yogi. I’m always trying to get my students to laugh in class (intentionally or not) and I wanna be in classes that make me feel like that photo up there – full of vibrant colour and life and far from being all serious and frowny.
Know what I’m saying?
Anyway, time for sleeping. Gotta big day of yoga (filled with rainbow coloured love) ahead of me and I wanna be well rested.
Update: Here’s the review
Til soon, folks!
~Svasti
Svasti: A Journey From Assault To Wholeness 