A teacher-y thing

Tags

arthritis, Asana, balasana, belly dancing, carpal tunnel, gut instinct, mis-matched socks, modified asana, observation skills, sun salutations, teacher-y thing, Yoga, yoga teaching

Apparently there’s this teacher-y thing that happens when one starts teaching yoga. Which I didn’t notice until I’d taught my first class. Teaching is a doing and a demonstrating activity, but also requires observation skills and an ability to translate what is observed into words and actions. Teaching relies on gut instinct, too.

I did a spot of teaching belly dancing about six years ago, but I never really noticed it then. This teacher-y thing.

And so far, I’ve had a grand total of five bods through the door in two different classes (if you remember, no one showed up to the first class!). Not a lot, but seems like that’s enough to get things going.

Had a bit of a plan for last Saturday’s class, based on some of what I’d observed my students doing the previous one. Not that I can expect too many repeat customers. I do have one though. She came back this week and I was excited to see her! Also, this week I had a guy join the class, all coughing fits and mis-matched socks and truckloads of concentration that prompted me to say: Soften the face, the belly, the arms, the hands, the heart…

I don’t ask where these people come from exactly. I know they or their social worker or someone has read an ad placed in various drop in centres around St Kilda on my behalf. I figure the rest doesn’t really matter as long as they’re happy to turn up and do a little breathing and moving with me.

So even though it wasn’t the same line up of students (I hadn’t expected it to be), my class plan was inspired by the previous class.

First part was simply planning to do less. I mean, we didn’t get through my entire class plan anyway, so it was time for a readjustment in that respect. This is a very beginner-y group, after all.

The second part was getting people to do some work at the wall. Asking them to start noticing their body a little more, and which part of the feet they’re placing their weight on. Insides? Outsides? Ball of the foot? Heel of the foot? Is one hip higher than the other? Is the spine a bit twisted? Are the shoulders rounded forward? And doing some sanding asana at the wall to really accentuate that awareness by seeing what touched the wall as they moved. Or how their weight distribution changed.

So that was cool. Then I introduced the class to sun salutations. A basic version that drops the knees to the mat and then into balasana before coming forward into upward facing dog. Gently does it with people that find down-dog and touching their toes to be challenging!

But I also had to create a REALLY modified version of sun salutes for one student (full disclosure: a friend of mine who was there to pad out the numbers). She has quite a nasty case of carpal tunnel, and also, arthritis in her toes. So too much weight on the wrists or the balls of the feet is just not good for her.

Just like Linda’s and Rachel’s recent posts on the myth of “perfect asana”, I wanted to find a way for my student/friend to experience sun salutations without all sorts of crazy pain.

What we devised between us (I needed her feedback to ensure it was doable) was sun salutations that used forearms instead of hands and kneeling instead of feet. So down dog was like balasana but with hips in the air (thighs at a 90 degree angle to the floor) and forearms reaching forward. Sphinx replaced up-dog. Transitions were on her forearms and knees, too. The rest she could manage. And as long as there was a focus on the breath and finding a flow to the movement, it worked for her just fine!

Funny thing is, she’d been to my practice classes when I was doing my teacher training and had never mentioned how much physical pain she was in. She didn’t think of explaining it to me until afterwards. She also didn’t think of not doing what the person leading the class asked her to do, regardless of her physical discomfort.

Which is interesting in itself. Students won’t always be honest about how they feel/what pain they’re in for unexplained reasons. That’s a good to know, right?

This teacher-y thing I mentioned? Well, it’s all of the above. To summarise, seems like it’s a sort of hyper-awareness of one’s students. Of what their needs might appear to be – which won’t necessarily be what is actually needed. And a responsibility to help people explore, learn more about their body and themselves in the process.

Also, I realised that mirroring (saying “take your left leg back” while demonstrating with my right) isn’t as hard as I’d previously thought. Well, sort of. As long as I look at the limb I’m talking about, I can manage to say the opposite one!

Finally, here’s something else I noticed. As a teacher, it’s very easy to infect the class with my state of mind. So, if I’m all about concentrating on saying the right things, not screwing up, and being precise… then I’ll have a very focused and probably quite tense group of people on my hands. But if I loosen up, and add in instructions like: Now take both the left and right corners of your mouth and turn them upwards…

Then they’re gonna have a bit more fun. And so will I. Yeah. 😀

~Svasti

The Workshop of Love – part 2

Tags

AC/DC, anahata, Asana, bandha, bhakti, bhava, Dinacharya, Hanuman, indifference, Intimacy, Krishnamacharya, Love, Mark Whitwell, Mudra, pranayama, strength receiving, sun salutations, Surrender, Valentine’s Day, Yoga

Photo liberated from Mark's Facebook profile 🙂

[Read part 1 first]

…You are a flower blooming in your own garden. Your first form arrived as one cell known as the heart. A spark of Life, initiated by male female, giving and receiving union of opposites, the catalyst of nurturing, your spirit took form and the source became seen…

Soft hands, suggests Mark as he levered apart my fierce anjali mudra. Soft like the heart, he smiles. His crinkly eyes smile at me, too. Whoah, that right there is a hit of the bhakti that envelopes Mark and all in his immediate vicinity!

We perform a series of sun salutations and the bhava is feeling, sensing, with no mention of strict ideas about alignment. Instead its – feel it, breathe it, and flow with the practice. Mark talks through the principals of Strength Receiving as we move and asks us to do our practice: Without drama or strain.

The end of the first day is full of anticipation of the next. The first six hours have already been so intense, but in a good way. A day of questions and answers, of movement and breath and most definitely, of heart openings. The kind that cause me to melt. This state of openness takes a little getting used to (every time) because my first reaction is always to protect myself. But here we are, ripping our chests open like Hanuman. On purpose. It’s both frightening and utterly glorious.

…For some of you this practice is too much, for others it’s not challenging enough. This is one of the problems with generic yoga classes. You need to find YOUR yoga – the yoga that’s right for you…

…According to the great “teacher’s teacher” T. Krishnamacharya, yoga must be adapted to the individual, not the individual adapted to the style of yoga. For your yoga practice to be most fruitful, it must be in harmony with your body type, age, health, and even cultural background…

Ideas to ruminate over.

I walk up to Mark to thank him for the last six hours but I’m almost speechless. He grins at me and envelopes me in a huge and long-lasting bear hug. ‘Nuff said!

That night on the other side of town, a few of us head out for dinner just down the road from Nadine’s apartment. But not Mark, who instead went with a friend to see AC/DC in concert. Yup, that’s right; he’s a rocker-yogi! Gotta love that!

Sunday afternoon – Valentine’s Day – we started the session with thoughts of a personalised practice, more questions and answers.

Having a yoga practice that is “mine”, and personalised to my body and needs is such an interesting concept. Especially when compared to the mass-market cookie-cutter approach of some of the stuff being sold as yoga out there.

I suspect that one of the reasons I was intimidated by yoga for a while there (many years ago now), is that I didn’t realise I could make it my own in this way, y’know? And then last year while doing yoga teacher training, I understood that on some level but still, no one ever said that explicitly and out loud!

But it makes so much sense! Bodies come in all shapes and sizes, and with all levels of mobility. The idea that you need to be flexible or picture perfect, or doing advanced poses to do yoga, is false.

I mean, some people report that they look around a class and find their competitive nature flaring up. Which can cause an attitude of feeling less than other people, OR feeling superior. Both are out of balance. Or perhaps a person will push themselves beyond their current capabilities in competition with themselves, which can easily result in injury. And despite what Mr Choudry might say, competition is not yoga!

Mark spoke about the male/female imbalance prevalent in most yoga classes (and by extension, in our communities). There are so many women in yoga classes, but hardly any men! And how that has to change if we’re going to make positive changes in the world. Generally speaking, men need to work at being more open and receptive, and women need to acknowledge their own power. Yoga is very good at helping people regain their balance in these ways. The surrender of Strength Receiving is both internal (from our Self, to our Self), as well as to between our Self and other people in our day to day lives.

And now that I think about it, “surrender” is a big part of the experience of feeling anahata chakra cracking open. The only way to co-exist with that state is to surrender! Essentially, indifference is a disorder of the heart.

One of Mark’s key teachings is around intimacy – with your Self, your body, your breath and your mind. And coming to terms with this concept as a part of my experience of yoga was interesting. I mean, my entire family for generations on both sides have shown no skill with expressing intimacy. It’s a long held, DNA-deep pattern, so how do you get better at intimacy when your natural pattern is to not really let people in? The answer of course, is that you have to start with yourself. And you have to give it a red hot go!

In yoga there’s a bunch of ways to do this – asana, pranayama, mudra, bandha, dinacharya, food etc. Intimacy with the self involves developing a sensitivity and awareness internally and externally and is therefore, inherently physical and sensate.

True intimacy isn’t about getting naked – although there’s nothing wrong with that! Instead, it is a quality that allows us to see, feel, know and realise in a very tangible way that we are but one heart, one organism, interconnected even as we appear separate.

Intimacy really starts to make sense within the context of yoga, as you move through your practice and use the breath to stay completely aware, moment to moment. The trick is that to really understand that, you have to do your practice and keep doing it!

Then you can extend what you’ve learned about yourself to how you deal with others. At least that’s the theory I’m working with so far…

…The ancient wisdom of yoga teaches that Life is already given to you, you are completely loved, you are here now. It teaches that we are not separate, cannot be separate from nature, which sustains us in a vast interdependence with everything…

It is true that we don’t have to go anywhere, or seek anything outside of ourselves in order to realise we are one and the same as god. However, I do think that for many people this message is too simple to accept. I know that twenty years ago, perhaps even only ten years ago I would not have been okay with that. Sometimes I think it takes lots of searching in order to realise there’s nowhere to go…

[Read part 3]

~Svasti

P.S. Once again, all quotes are from Mark Whitwell – things he said, his book and/or his Facebook status updates.