Rox Does Yoga

Yoga, Wellness, and Life

General guidelines for asana practice: comfortable and steady May 3, 2011

Filed under: breath,teacher training,yoga — R. H. Ward @ 7:19 am
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N gave us a handout listing general guidelines for a yoga class:

  1. Start with a centering exercise
  2. Breathe in and out through the nose
  3. Engage diaphragmatic breathing (not shallow breathing)
  4. Do not hold the breath; let breath flow
  5. Practice on an empty stomach
  6. Wear loose-fitting comfortable clothing
  7. Always end practice with sivasana and meditation
  8. Stay present and focused on practice
  9. Make sure you are comfortable and steady in every posture
  10. Close the eyes if you are able, or focus on drishti (focal point)
  11. Have no expectations of your practice; remain detached
  12. Each posture has an attitude behind it: acceptance, surrender, balance, strength, heart-opening
  13. Each posture works with subtle body energy and chakras
  14. Time of practice and place of practice are important elements

Many of these are common-sense things or things I’d heard before, but there are a couple that were new to me. One of these is #9, “Make sure you are comfortable and steady in every posture”, which I’d never heard before coming to N & J’s classes. They’re not saying that you should feel as comfortable practicing yoga as you feel sitting on the couch. What they’re saying is that, even in a difficult pose, you should be able to feel comfortable and steady staying in the pose for a while, despite the fact that it’s difficult.

We all know that, when practicing yoga, you need to find a balance between actual pain and the strain of stretching in a new way. If a posture is causing actual pain, you need to get out of that posture or modify it so it doesn’t hurt. However, some strain is natural, the body’s way of letting us know that something is going on here. Feeling strain allows us to practice tapas and use that burning feeling in our arms or legs as fuel to become stronger.

Despite the strain and ache in our muscles, we need to find a way to feel steady in the posture. If we’re wobbling all over the place, we can’t find our balance, and our feet are slipping, then we’re not practicing the pose properly. The best thing to do is to come out of the pose a little bit: change your stance, bend a little less, modifying the pose until you feel steady. If you don’t feel steady, it’s a sign that your body isn’t ready for the most challenging modification, and maybe you should spend a little more time in the basic posture or a in gentler modification. If you feel steady in the posture, then you can allow your body to relax into it a little, and you can hold the posture comfortably for longer.

Similarly, N & J tell us to pay attention to the breath in a difficult pose. Is your breathing ragged and uneven? Are you panting like you just ran a marathon? Or are you holding the breath? Then it’s time to modify the posture. Hatha yoga class isn’t like kickboxing class – the point isn’t just to give the body a good workout. You want to be able to keep your breath deep and even and regular as you hold each pose. Let your breath guide you as you flow from one pose to another. There’s nothing wrong with modifying a pose to make it easier, or with taking a rest if you need one. Get your breath back to a nice even flow and focus on keeping it steady and even as you practice. It will make your practice stronger and you’ll feel better afterwards!

Are any points on the list of general guidelines unfamiliar to you? Do you see any surprises here?

 

Yoga teaching voice April 30, 2011

Filed under: reflections,teacher training,yoga,yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 7:50 pm
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As a writer in grad school, I really struggled with voice, trying to write poems that would stand out as MY poems. My thesis advisor would tell me how important it was for my poems to hang together as a cohesive group, with a voice to unify them; he said he wanted my poems to have a voice so strong that if someone dropped a pile of unattributed poems on his desk, he could pick mine out of the stack. At the time, I was 23. I had no idea really who I was as a poet, and was just beginning to figure out who I might be as a person, so when my advisor talked about voice it was hard really to understand what he meant. I didn’t have as much confidence as my classmates did, and that came through in the poems. In the years since then, I’ve made a lot of progress with developing my voice. The poems I’m writing now (or was writing, before teacher training started) have a much stronger voice, a voice that was influenced by many writers I admire but which is still definitively mine.

This teacher training weekend made me think about my voice as a yoga teacher. I don’t mean my speaking voice (although that’s important too), but who I am and what’s important to me as a teacher. I’ve been practicing yoga for over eight years, and I’ve taken classes with a lot of different yoga instructors, all of whom teach differently. The core poses are all the same, but every teacher is going to phrase things differently, is going to emphasize something different. My favorite teachers all live in my head somewhere: Gene in Boston, my friend Lucia, Jennifer Schelter, Adam and Lisie at Enso, now J & N, even the woman who taught my very first yoga class back in North Carolina. When I practice yoga, and even more when I try to teach a pose, I have their words in my mind to draw upon, but it does no good for me to just regurgitate another teacher’s class. That’s not helpful for me, and it’d be dead boring for the students. What I need to do is to synthesize the different voices I hear in my mind and add my own perspective – make my yoga my own. It doesn’t sound all that difficult, but practicing teaching this weekend, it was incredibly difficult! My classmates and I could all hear J’s voice in our mouths as we taught. Each of us needs to develop our own unique voice.

How? The only way to do it is practice, practice, practice. I need to dive deeper into my own yoga practice, not just doing poses but paying attention to each pose, noticing the little things I do to get my alignment right and figuring out how to tell those little things to someone else, how to describe those things in my own way. And I need to practice teaching. The same way I had to practice writing poetry to find my voice as a poet, or the same way that a student in a public speaking class needs to practice before giving a speech, I need to practice giving yoga instructions, practice hearing my voice in this new way, practice paying attention to what the students are doing and finding ways to guide and correct them. I’ll get a lot of this practice through the teacher training program, but still, I think F’s going to be getting a lot of yoga lectures for a while. This issue of voice is something I’d never really considered before, but it’s critically important to explore if I’m going to follow this path.

 

April Yoga Weekend: Friday night practice on sun salutations April 27, 2011

Filed under: teacher training,yoga — R. H. Ward @ 3:05 pm
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On Friday night I found out that this month is… Asana Month! Last month was intensive study on the yamas and niyamas, and this month will be intensive study on poses. Really excited about this, but on the other hand, I do wish this month was something more bookish that could be easily done in a plane, train, or automobile. F and I have a LOT of travel going on in May, which will make time on the mat more difficult to come by. I predict much grumping and whining in my future (but then, that’s pretty much the norm).

After group sharing on Friday, N gave us a handout that covered general guidelines for asana practice (I’ll come back to this in a later post), guidelines for sequencing a yoga class, and notes on each type of yoga posture: sun salutations, backbends, standing postures, twists, etc. On Friday night, we went through sun salutations in detail, papers  and notebooks open next to our mats, practicing and taking notes and practicing some more. I felt so pumped up – yes, this is exactly what I want to be doing! It was really exciting, doing poses and talking through them and asking questions about nitpicky details of alignment.

I’ve been doing sun salutations for over eight years (longer if you count Paul and Caroline teaching me a sun salutation after our college production of Children of Eden). Sun salutations always follow the same basic format – reaching up, folding forward, stepping/jumping back, backbend, downward-facing dog, stepping up, and rising back up – but there are variations in how some teachers teach sun salutations. It seems like something so basic to most people’s yoga practice, but I’ve always wondered about those variations. (For those who aren’t familiar with sun salutations, here’s the Wikipedia page about sun salutations, and I’ve linked a few videos below.)

N & J recommend teaching the “classic” form of sun salutation for a beginner class. This form takes out some of the more difficult elements. Instead of jumping or hopping back, you step one leg back into a lunge, hold for a few breaths, then step the other foot back to plank position. You then lower gently down to the belly (rather than doing a chaturanga push up), and take Sphinx or Cobra pose (rather than upward-facing dog). Press back to down-dog as usual, then step one foot forward to do the lunge on the other side, before stepping both feet up to the hands and completing the sequence.

Other common variations are Sun Salutations A and B. In A, you step or jump both feet all the way back, skipping the lunge, and typically you do chaturanga and upward dog. Sun Salutation B starts with chair pose and also includes Warrior 1.  (Here are videos of an incredibly flexible guy doing Sun Salutation A and  Sun Salutation B.)

I’m more used to doing Sun Salutation A, so it was actually a little challenging for me when I started attending classes at this studio and doing the “classic” sun salutation. The lunges were really hard when I wasn’t used to them! Now, though, I can appreciate it more. In the past, doing A, I was used to moving on every inhale and exhale, while with the classic version, each pose can be held for a few breaths, which can allow for a deeper experience of the pose while still building heat in the body. I find that slowing my sun salutations down this way can also help me to improve my alignment in tiny ways, creating a better experience.

Friday night’s class was useful because we were able to analyze each step of the different Sun Salutation sequences, looking at every option and modification for each step. After having practiced yoga for many years, it was useful to look at this basic sequence from a beginner’s perspective, examining what could be challenging or painful, and seeing how the poses could be interpreted by beginners.

 

April Yoga Weekend: Friday’s group sharing April 25, 2011

Filed under: reflections,teacher training,yoga — R. H. Ward @ 2:19 pm
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So, Friday night’s teacher training session began with group sharing. What did studying the yamas and niyamas bring up for each of us? We all also had the chance to practice teaching last month, and N & J wanted to see how we were feeling about that. It was really interesting, and also really reassuring, to hear how each of my classmates is doing with the workload. We’re all struggling in different ways, but studying the yamas and niyamas affected each of us. Also, we all have conflicted feelings about the difficulties of actual teaching, which I’ll get into more later.

My sharing moment was interesting. In response to another student, J gave us a speech about how we shouldn’t discuss what we’re doing and feeling in teacher training with people in our regular lives; he feels it’s best not to talk to others about your spiritual practice, because other people might misjudge or misunderstand and it could cause difficulty in your personal life. When he finished, I piped up with, “Well, actually, I started a blog!” I explained that I’m a writer and that’s how I process my experiences best, and that with the TT commitment I wouldn’t have much time to write, so I wanted to channel my writing energy into something that would be helpful for yoga. I described how useful the blog has been for exploring my feelings on the yamas and niyamas, and how committing to regular blog posts has forced me to examine events and emotions I might not otherwise have thought twice about. And I told everyone how wonderfully supportive all of you, dear readers, have been. J looked at me skeptically and said he hopes that works out for me. It was a little awkward, and not exactly how I had envisioned telling them about this project.

I do firmly believe that starting this blog was the right choice for me. I think best on the page, so writing everything out has been incredibly useful for processing all that I’m learning, and for keeping track of my progress. I think the blog is also a good choice for me professionally: I don’t have a lot of by-lines or articles to my name, so when I do want to freelance as a writer in the future, I’ll have this blog to use as an example of what I can do, and it may lead to more and better writing gigs. And finally, I’m really glad I started it because of all the feedback I’ve gotten from readers out there, who have found my words helpful or inspiring, and that really means a lot.

It’s interesting to me how the teacher training process has made me examine all my choices carefully, even choices that seemed easy or obvious, even choices that I’d thought carefully about before. I think too that I’m incredibly lucky in my friends and family and in the abundant support I’ve received. Not everyone is so lucky; becoming a yoga teacher isn’t as obvious a career or lifestyle choice as, say, becoming an accountant, and I’m sure there are many yoga teachers out there who met with difficulty or derision as they embarked on this path. The fact that writing a blog seemed such a natural choice for me possibly says less about me than it does about all of you, and about my parents, who may have loved for me to be a doctor, but who love more the person that I’ve become. They were nothing less than delighted when I told them I’d signed up for teacher training, because I’d wanted to do it for so long. At every new turn, they listen and do their best to understand, and they may think I’m crazy sometimes, but they also know how much thought and work I put into this decision, and they respect that and support my choices. (Not to mention my amazing husband, who is quite frequently too good to be true.) So I do think that I am lucky, incredibly lucky and blessed. If I feel able to write freely about myself and my experiences, that writing at least in part stems from all the support I’ve received, and I’m so very grateful for that.

 

Teaching a seated twist! April 5, 2011

Filed under: Pose of the Month,teacher training,yoga — R. H. Ward @ 8:54 am
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Last night in yoga class, there were three of us teacher trainees there, and we all got to teach. (I don’t think I’m going to get to relax and enjoy a yoga class for the next 9.5 months, but hey, it makes sense that I actually have to work for my almost-a-year of complimentary yoga classes.) Julia did a balance pose, Nancy did a backbend, and I did a seated twist.

Seated twist.(Hey, check it out, I added an item of visual interest to my post! Thanks to F, special guest photographer, who somehow managed to climb halfway up the wall to get this shot. I went back and added a photo to my Tree Pose post too!)

So here’s the seated twist I chose to teach. And of course, J asked us not to do the pose ourselves, just to talk through it. I understand why he wants us to do it that way, but what I discovered is that this is a difficult pose to tell someone how to get into.

OK, so first, you start out sitting up straight with your legs out in front of you. Easy. Now you’ve got to get the leg bend. What I said was something like, “Bring up your left knee, and then let it drop off to the side, and press your left foot against your right thigh.” That’s how I personally do it, but based on the class response, it might not be the best way ever to tell someone else how to do it (I then followed up that clear and accessible bit of instruction with, “Look, Julia’s got it!”). Not totally sure what the best way would be. Maybe, “Bend the left knee and slide your foot up your right leg”? Or just, “Bend your left knee and place your foot against your right thigh”? But then you miss the bit where the left leg is parallel to the floor, not up.

Anyway, hopefully now we’ve got the leg bent, so next is the twist. What I said was, “Raise your left arm – no, just to shoulder height – and now twist toward your left leg. Let your left arm lead you into the twist, and when you’re at the limit of the twist, drop your left hand to the floor. Bring your right hand to your left knee, and look over your left shoulder” (I’m not looking over my shoulder in the photo, but you should be when you try this at home). In retrospect, I should have brought the right hand to the knee first, then done the twist, because I think the hand on the knee gives you some leverage and helps keep your back straight, which people were having some trouble with. I also might have offered some guidance on where the left hand should drop behind you – i.e., right behind your tush – because having the hand too far back possibly caused people to be leaning back too much. A few people were confused about the whole darn thing and J had to go fix one woman, which I was a little embarrassed about.

Things I neglected to mention: keeping your right foot flexed and right leg active instead of just letting it lay there, and using the breath to deepen into the pose (breathe in and lengthen your spine, breathe out and move a little deeper into the twist). I also neglected to count my breaths as a way of telling how long they’d been in the pose so I just had to guess.

And then, you untwist and do it on the other side, which hopefully is less confusing because you just did it once. It seemed to be less confusing on the other side in class.

Overall, I don’t think I did the best job ever teaching this pose, but it helped to deconstruct it a bit here to see what I can do better next time. (I don’t know that I’ll always post here after every time I teach anything, because that would be a lot considering I’m trying to get to class twice a week. Maybe I’ll post for every new pose I get to teach? Or every interesting and out of the ordinary teaching event? We’ll see.)

 

Today’s yoga: teaching tree pose April 2, 2011

Filed under: teacher training,yoga — R. H. Ward @ 3:29 pm
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Today J made me teach a pose in yoga class! Before class, as everyone was coming in and getting settled, I was waiting on my mat and J looked at me and said, “Want to teach today?” I said, “No,” but J told me to be ready to teach a balance pose.

The whole first half of class was a struggle for me then, thinking about what balance pose I wanted to teach, trying not to overthink it (I’ve done balance poses hundreds of times, heard balance poses taught hundreds of times, I know this), and trying to actually pay attention to class and be in the moment.  Really difficult.  Plus (and I know everyone must think this sometimes) it felt like J was making the class extra-challenging on purpose.  And then I was scoping out the other students in the class (there were 12 of us) to see if anyone looked likely to have difficulty doing a balance pose, and which of my TT classmates were there (Sarah and Trish were there), and then I reminded myself that I trust all my classmates and we’re doing this together and it’s fine.  And then, oh wait, I’m supposed to be paying attention to Warrior 2 right now.

Tree pose.I was torn on which pose to teach.  My first thought was Tree Pose, because it’s my favorite and because I know it well and my group practiced teaching it in training a few weeks ago.  Then I thought I should challenge myself and do Hand-To-Big-Toe Pose, because that one is challenging for me just by itself before I even think about anyone else.  I started running through the steps of Hand-To-Big-Toe Pose in my head, but then I wasn’t sure if I could do it well, and I couldn’t remember if I’d done that pose at this studio and then I worried that they don’t teach that one here or if they do they call it something else, and then I couldn’t think of any other balance poses except Dancer which I know I don’t want to try to teach.  So I ended up doing Tree, and it went okay.  J said I did well, and I checked with Sarah after class to see if she could hear me in the back of the room and she said she could.  It was still hard, though, even though it’s the easiest balance pose for me to teach – I’ve heard it taught so many times before and yet, doing it myself, I didn’t know where to work in that your gaze should find an unmoving spot to rest, and I didn’t mention the neat little trick I learned at the anusara studio last summer because I figured I should keep it simple.  Here is basically what I said:

Bring your hands to a prayer, and start shifting your weight over to your left foot.  When you feel good and grounded, you can begin to lift your right foot off the floor.  You can press your right foot against your left leg at the ankle, or at the calf, or you can bring the foot all the way up to your thigh.  Start to press your right knee out to the side.  Now when you feel good and steady, you can bring your hands up into the branches of your tree.

And that’s pretty much the basic instructions.  I’m fine with that.  I also remembered to breathe, myself, and to count my breaths so that I didn’t leave everybody hanging for too long or take them out too soon. And I did not remember to worry about my hair or about straightening my clothing, which I take to be a good thing.

J had me come up to the front of the room and teach from his mat, and he stood by my mat like a regular student.  While I taught the right side, I did the pose myself while talking through it; then J whispered to me that for the left side I should just talk and not do the pose myself, which is harder, but which gives you more of a chance to look around and see how everyone’s doing.  Everyone was doing pretty well.  And then I was done and J and I switched back and he told me I did a good job, and I spent the rest of the class alternately analyzing how I’d done and trying to stop analyzing.

 

Weekend session # 1: Saturday March 21, 2011

Filed under: Pose of the Month,teacher training,yoga,yoga philosophy — R. H. Ward @ 2:36 pm
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On Saturday we attended the morning hatha yoga class (butt = kicked), had lunch together, and then started on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (puh-TAN-juh-lee, apparently, I’ve been saying it wrong all these years).  The Yoga Sutras are probably 3000 years old and contain the ancient wisdom of Indian gurus on which modern yoga is based.  A natural place to start! Each sutra is a brief saying, as concise as possible to make it easy to memorize. The word sutra actually means “a stitch or thread” (where the modern suture comes from), with the sense that each sutra is a single thread of meaning.  There are almost 200 sutras total, but get this: in all of these sutras, there are only a few that are about the physical practice of yoga.  Like, fewer than five, out of almost 200.  This is because the physical practice of yoga is intended to be secondary to the mental, emotional, spiritual practice.  We do the physical practice to make our bodies healthy and well, so they won’t distract us when we sit in meditation.  This is largely counter to the way yoga is practiced in the US (think power yoga at the gym).

We’ll be working with the Sutras over the entire course of our training, but right now we’re starting with Book 2, verses 29-45 (in the Sri Swami Satchidananda translation), which is the part on yamas and niyamas.  The yamas are five practices of self-restraint:

  • Ahimsa: non-violence, non-harming
  • Satya: truthfulness
  • Asteya: non-stealing
  • Brahmacharya: control of sensual cravings
  • Aparigraha: non-possessiveness, non-greed

The niyamas are a set of five observances:

  • Shaucha: purity of body and mind
  • Santosha: contentment, satisfaction
  • Tapas: discipline, austerity
  • Svadhyaya: self-study
  • Ishvara pranidhana: surrender, devotion, faith

You got all that, right?  Don’t worry, I sat in a lecture all afternoon on Saturday and I’m looking at my notes right now and I’m not sure I get it all either.  But not to worry, over the next month I’ll be posting on each of these in detail!

After Saturday’s lecture, we broke up into groups of four and did a little teaching practice.  Each group chose a yoga pose, and one person acted as a teacher while the others were students.  The teacher had to give instructions on how to do the pose, without demonstrating the pose herself, and the students had to do the pose exactly according to the teacher’s instructions.  Then we switched so that each person had a turn as the teacher.   Being the teacher was much harder than you’d think, especially if you’re the sort of person who talks with her hands.  I caught myself with my arms going up into tree pose completely unconsciously.  It was difficult to describe exactly how to do a pose without reminding myself by doing it.  It’s honestly hard to be in a yoga setting and to stay still.  It was also interesting to see how each person’s instructions differed.  I started teaching tree pose, and my instructions were pretty basic since I was the first.  Michael followed me almost exactly, Trish added some new points, and then Joanna added some more information.  Also, as soon as I finished teaching and took on a student role, just doing the pose I remembered all these things I should have included in my instructions on how to do it.  We also taught seated forward bend, which was interesting for me because the others are most used to how N & J teach this pose, and so their instructions mimicked that, while the little yoga instructor in my head is my old teacher Gene, who taught it differently, and so I described it the way Gene would. Neither way was wrong, just different ways to verbalize how to complete this particular set of actions in doing this pose.

Mostly, the purpose of the exercise was to start getting us used to the sounds of our own voices.  It also got us on our feet and moving around after an afternoon of lecture, which was nice, and also got me at least thinking about the essence of what a pose is, what’s most important about that pose, what does a beginner student most need to know in order to do the pose correctly.  Which was a good thing to start thinking about, considering…

Our homework assignments!  Each month we’ll need to do posture write-ups.  This month we’re doing two, on forward bends.  We choose two types of forward bends, and then we write:

  1. Step-by-step instructions on how to practice this posture, in our own words, written as if for a beginner – the bare essentials, in bullet points
  2. The benefits of doing this posture
  3. Contraindications for this posture and who should not do this posture
  4. My own experience with this posture (based on my practice this month, when I should be doing the two postures every day and paying attention to how I feel in the pose and my mental experience of the pose)

Our other homework assignment is to read Book 2, verses 29-45 of the Sutras and to write a reflection paper on the yamas and niyamas as they relate to me in my life.  Since there are ten total yamas and niyamas, and five weeks until our next weekend seminar, I’m thinking that a good way to space this out might be to do two of them per week – which will make this a perfect topic for this blog!

Yes, you, my dear readers, will be keeping me honest with my homework assignments.  Not exactly what I imagined when I conceived of this blog, but a nice side benefit.  After all, this blog exists to document my teacher training journey: my reflections, concerns, joys and troubles along the way.  And if said reflections can then be channeled into homework assignments that I can hand in, so much the better.

Overall, I think the first weekend seminar of the TT was really excellent.  I’m looking forward to yoga class tonight (I’m hoping to get to the studio not just once a week, but 2-3 times), and I’m actually excited about the readings and homework.  Whee!

 

Weekend session # 1: Friday

Filed under: teacher training,yoga — R. H. Ward @ 2:11 pm
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This weekend’s teacher training session was, first of all, pretty fantastic.  I drove home Friday night thinking, Wow, I think I’m really going to love this.  N & J are great and teach really well together.  There are 12 trainees in the program, and I really like all of them so far – and I’m not just saying that because we’re all friending each other on Facebook and they might read this, I genuinely do like them all.  Which isn’t all that big of a surprise when you think about it, because what kind of people are going to choose to drop $2K+ on a yoga teacher training course?  People like me, that’s who, people who like things I like and are passionate about things I’m passionate about.  We’re all different people, of course, at different points in our lives (some of the other students are younger than me, some older; some have little children or grown children or no children at all), but we have a common bond just by virtue of the fact that this was important enough to each of us that we plunked down our money and chose to be in that room.  So, yeah, I do like everybody, and everybody had something interesting to say at some point in the weekend.  N & J made the point that, at first, the two of them will be doing most of the talking as we cover the basics, but later on, the trainees will be doing most of the talking.  I’m happy to hear all of these people talk.

The class itself of course was really interesting.  We spent most of our time in lecture, which surprised me a little (although I’m not sure what I was expecting).  Friday night we did introductions (kind of awkward – I think everyone was about as nervous as I was – but by the end of class on Saturday we were all more comfortable and I think we all know one another’s names now).  Friday’s lecture covered, first and foremost, requirements for graduation, which are as follows:

  1. Attendance at the weekend seminars
  2. Attendance to hatha yoga class at least once per week
  3. Completion of writing assignments on time each month
  4. Ability to teach a yoga class by the end of the program.

Very reasonable, I think, but N wanted to emphasize that they’ve had a number of students in the past who might’ve made good yoga teachers but who didn’t complete their requirements and therefore didn’t graduate.  Point taken.  Friday’s lecture also covered the basics of our yoga tradition and lineage, and what it means to be a “householder” yogi (i.e., we’re not closeted up in an ashram, we live in the world with homes and families and responsibilities).  Much of this I had heard in some form before (probably in BKS Iyengar’s Light on Life, which I may have to reread after this program is over), but still, informative.  We finished class with a brief yoga practice together, which kicked my butt.  (This will be a common theme, at least for a while, because I’m used to vinyasa-style yoga, where you flow through the poses, and N & J are teaching us to teach classical hatha yoga, which emphasizes holding the poses for much longer, which I’m not at all used to and which results in the aforementioned butt-kicking.)  N asked us to pay attention to our practice and see where we were and what we learned about ourselves through the practice.  I learned that if I practice yoga after 9:00 at night, I fall asleep in sivasana.  Probably not quite what she was going for, but good to know nonetheless.

 

TT starts tonight March 18, 2011

Filed under: teacher training,yoga — R. H. Ward @ 12:50 pm
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My teacher training course starts tonight, 6-10.  I’m excited that after all this time it’s finally going to happen!  I signed up and mailed my check a few weeks ago, and since then it just feels like I’ve been waiting.  And planning.  F and I have had to keep the TT in mind as we make any sort of plans for the rest of the year – everything from our travel plans for his sister’s wedding in May, to whether and when we’re going to buy a house, has to be discussed with an eye to when my yoga weekends are.  Most of the TT dates aren’t even set in stone yet – we’ll be talking about that at the first meeting tonight, which I’m worried about, because F and I planned everything in May around that weekend.  My sis-in-law has booked her wedding reception and we’ve booked our flights, and my fingers are firmly crossed that no one in my TT class has a conflict.  I keep imagining possible scenarios where things don’t work out, which is unlikely and isn’t useful to anyone.  I have to keep telling myself that I don’t have anything to get upset about yet, so there’s no use getting upset.

I guess I’m just nervous.  This is such a big deal for me, and I’ve been wanting to do it and looking forward to it for so long.  I don’t know N & J (the teachers) very well yet; although I do like them, I don’t really know their teaching style well and don’t know what they will expect.  Of course I’m also worried about the other students in the class.  There will be 12 of us all together, only one of whom I know I’ve met and like.  In the regular yoga classes I’ve attended at this studio, it seems like everybody knows everybody else.  Will the other students be cliquey?  Will they be nice or mean, will we have things to talk about, will they like me?  More importantly, are we going to be able to work together for the next ten months?

Plus I need to coordinate all the details of fitting this commitment into my regular life.  What time do I need to leave work to get there on time, and what am I having for dinner, and what will I pack for lunch tomorrow, and what will F do all day on Saturday if he’s stuck at home without the car?  I’m hoping that these things will become more second nature as time passes and we get more comfortable with this additional lump on the calendar.

Today I am reminding myself to breathe, and to be excited, and that all manner of things shall be well.  I’m looking forward to updating next week with what an amazing weekend I had.

 

What does a yoga teacher training course entail, anyway? March 17, 2011

Filed under: teacher training,yoga — R. H. Ward @ 1:31 pm
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I thought it might be useful to go over what exactly is involved in a yoga teacher training program, for those you out there who might not know.  In the US, Yoga Alliance, a national yoga education and support organization, sets minimum standards for yoga teacher training, to ensure that yoga teachers understand and value yoga’s history and traditions.  Yoga Alliance advocates a 200-hour training program for new yoga teachers.  Yoga schools and studios can apply to have their 200-hour programs approved by Yoga Alliance.  If a student completes a Yoga Alliance-approved 200-hour training program, then she is eligible to register with Yoga Alliance as a Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT) and put fancy initials after her name.  Yoga Alliance keeps a searchable database of both registered yoga schools and registered yoga teachers.

Although it’s possible to teach yoga without being registered with Yoga Alliance, it seemed like a really good idea to go through the process.  First, if I choose a registered yoga school, then I know I’m getting a worthwhile education in yoga itself and in the teaching of yoga.  After completing the program, I’ll have a really strong foundation for my future practice and teaching.  Also, being able to register as a RYT means that I’ll have actual qualifications to show to prospective employers when I go looking for yoga teaching jobs.  And, theoretically, I may make good connections through the program and through Yoga Alliance that will help me to work as a yoga teacher down the line.

So what’s involved with the 200-hour training program?  Yoga Alliance standards including the following categories: 100 hours on yoga techniques/practice, 25 hours on teaching methodology, 20 hours on anatomy and physiology, 30 hours on yoga philosophy, lifestyle, and ethics.  The rest of the time is spent on practicum (hands-on practice in teaching) and electives at the school’s discretion.  East Eagle’s training program conforms to these standards.

So that’s what I’m in for!  It’ll be a huge challenge, but I can’t wait to get started.