Teaching my first yoga class…..
Karuna Blog
One day in retrospect the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful -Sigmund Freud
Teaching my First Yoga Class
I taught my first yoga class last Wednesday. I was having a hellacious week at work, and my mind was pretty much liquefied by the time I sat down to work on the flow of the class. I was incredibly nervous, more nervous than I had been for my practicum. I wanted to be courageous, despite the fear, so I accepted the challenge. I came up with a meditation to open the class, and then worked on the rest. I decided on a water theme as it was raining outside. The meditation was envisioning your thoughts as smooth stones that you would then skip across a calm pond. My delivery got a little jumbled, not very conducive to mediation, but at the end of the class one of the students shared her visualization with me, which was pretty funny involving Dick Clark’s face on a rock, and it made up for my feeling that i had been completely inept. Then there was the rest of it. All I can say is - there was a clock and then I seemed to have blacked out for the rest of the class. I finished my whole flow in 20 minutes, and then panicked. Hence the blacking out part. The main thing I learned is - build into the poses and learn how time the poses and how long to hold the students in the poses. Research the style more, and transitional language. Work out my savasana too!!!
In the end the experience was nothing less than humbling. At least now I have taken the first step. There was a time when i just would have poured it all into a daydream and never made it into reality.
Observe the Obvious…..
“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes.”
—Arthur Conan Doyle, from The Hound of the Baskervilles
I think this is an inspiring quote for the effects of meditation.
For my practicum at 4025, I included this breath of joy sequence without the stretching. I was so nervous about the practicum, I felt that if I put pranayama in the practice with a focus on happiness and letting go, that it would make me and the students feel good. I think it was effective. I am realizing that as I near the end of my teacher training, that my practice is less about exercise, sweating and pushing my body to its limits. I need the yoga to boost my mood, help my self esteem and heal my body and mind.
I found this man on 7th Avenue in Park Slope. He was leaning heavily on his cane, looking down, wearing a grimaced face. I felt bad for him, so I smiled and waved when I walked past. His face changed completely. He lit up, smiled wide, and gave me a cheery greeting. There was nothing forced about it. He seemed like a man who went through life looking for the smallest excuses to be happy.
I walked 50 feet down the sidewalk, turned around, and walked back to him. “I want to take your photo,” I told him, “because of how big you smiled when I walked by.”
He said: “Well I saw someone smiling at me who I didn’t even know. So I thought: ‘By God! I Better do something!’”
(via npr)
Photo from Walking Meditation exercise.
Finding your inner teacher…
Last night was susan’s last time teaching our lovable class of budding yoginis. The message that she left us with during our savasana was, “find your inner teacher..” She asked us to focus and allow the message from our inner teacher to bubble up. I realized at that moment that my brain, for once was not swirling and looking for something profound and enlightened simply delivered me this message - that I am going to accept without any judgment- “Keep calm and carry on.”
February (Taken with instagram)
