Rox Does Yoga

Yoga, Wellness, and Life

Prenatal Yoga: Teaching Prep April 9, 2013

Filed under: yoga — R. H. Ward @ 1:24 pm
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Last Monday night, I went to Sarah’s prenatal yoga class at East Eagle Yoga, with the idea that I could observe the class in preparation for teaching it in a few weeks. This was an all-around great idea. Arriving at the studio, I got to see J and a few of my other teacher training friends, who were wrapping up an earlier class. The prenatal class was great for me physically, a perfect workout for my recovering body (because I fell off the yoga wagon again: this time with an illness that led to an ear infection for YB and 3 1/2 days out of work and a possible sinus infection for me).

And professionally, it was great to observe Sarah teaching. She structured the class much the way I would, but she has so much experience with and passion for prenatal yoga, so I picked up some good language specific to the needs of a prenatal class. At one point, resting in mountain pose, Sarah talked about the importance of moving between tension and ease during childbirth: the ability to work hard during moments of tension and then relax completely in moments of ease. It was only a few words, but it really struck a chord with me, since if I hadn’t been able to relax completely between contractions, I don’t know how I would have made it through YB’s birth.

The other big thing I liked about Sarah’s class went beyond asana. She made time at the beginning of class for her students to talk about their pregnancies and share both physical and emotional concerns, and she shared some of her own worries as well, with her due date right around the corner. This felt so important, and it’s something I wish I’d had during my pregnancy. I’ll definitely be continuing this practice when I take over the class.

Overall, seeing Sarah teach refreshed my memory on the research I did last year when I was pregnant and teaching prenatal yoga. I feel like I can do this job in Sarah’s absence, do a good job of it, and offer something worthwhile to the students.

 

All of my peeps do yoga April 2, 2013

Filed under: yoga — R. H. Ward @ 1:38 pm
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I hope you all had a happy Easter, a great Passover, or a pleasant spring holiday of your choice. (For more yoga peeps, check out this and this.)

 

What to really expect at your first yoga class March 21, 2013

Filed under: yoga — R. H. Ward @ 1:21 pm
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I love this fun snarky post by Rob Pollak: What to really expect at your first yoga class. Accurate in many ways, especially “you will have no idea what is happening” , and I love the ending. Because no matter how confusing, weird, and embarrassing yoga may seem the first time you try it, it’s totally worth sticking with it.

 

Beginning Again… Again March 19, 2013

Filed under: yoga,yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 1:15 pm
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Recently I wrote about how I was starting to get my yoga practice back by carving out some practice time early in the mornings. Well, soon after that post, the entire family – F, YogaBaby, and I – all came down with a stomach bug. It took us days to recover. Then a family member visited from out of town, the entire family caught a low-level cold, and finally the disaster that is daylight saving time hit us hard. Any parent can tell you that “springing ahead” wreaks havoc on a small child, and it wasn’t too kind to F and me either. And so my yoga got off track again. I know that life is what’s happening when your plans get derailed, and maybe someday I’ll look back fondly on the vomit, screaming, snot, and exhaustion of the past month, but let me tell you it was not exactly fun to live through.

One of the worst things about a month like this, to me, is that I always seem to lose my yoga time right when I need it the most. Last week, for example, when YB was still adjusting to the time change and refused to go to bed for the fourth night in a row, I set her thrashing, howling little body in the crib, went to another room, and yelled and punched the floor. (Yes, the floor.) I felt frustrated, angry, and helpless, and knowing that none of it was YB’s fault just made me angry at myself for not having more patience. These are the feelings I count on my yoga practice to help me control; having that quiet time to check in with my body and spirit and to center myself helps me so much to be a calmer person.

My challenge at times like this is to find that calm center on my own, without the framework of an asana practice. That night I couldn’t find it. But YB cried for less than ten minutes before rolling over and falling asleep on her own – I was upset for a lot longer than she was. No amount of singing and cuddling from me could help her to do that, that night: she had to find it herself. The bedtime routine has improved steadily since then, and last night I had my sweet snuggly baby bedtime back. I appreciated it even more after the rough nights.

After a relaxing weekend and the chance to catch up on some of our lost sleep, F and I have started setting the alarm clock early again. We’ll gradually work backwards until we’re getting up at 5:30 again, but we started with getting up just ten minutes early yesterday. I did five half sun salutes in my bathrobe, then sat quietly on my meditation cushion for a few minutes. It’s a start. What’s important isn’t how many times you fall out of the routine – it’s being able to start fresh and begin again, and again, and again.

 

Getting back in the swing of things February 21, 2013

Filed under: checking in,yoga — R. H. Ward @ 1:45 pm
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For the past week, I have practiced yoga every day! On the weekend, I got a good half-hour practice in each day during YogaBaby’s naps, but on the weekdays, I’ve been getting up at 5:30 am so I can practice for 15-20 minutes before we start the day. This hasn’t been as horribly as I would have expected. First of all, my husband F has been getting up at 5:30 for a while now to write, so I’m already used to the alarm going off. Also, YB suddenly decided that she only needs one night-feeding instead of two, so getting up early has been much easier now that I’m getting a little more sleep. (I also theorize that, with having a baby, I’ve gotten used to sleeping less in general, so getting up early may be less of a hardship than it would have been for me pre-YB.)

I have to say, I’m feeling so much better than I was. I hadn’t practiced yoga at all between January 14 and February 13 (family illness, out-of-town guests, and then inertia as contributing factors), and it showed. My body felt rusty, sore, and old, and even worse, my emotions were noticeably more negative and less under my control. I hadn’t realized just how much I relied on that yoga time for not just my physical health but my emotional well-being too. Add to that the fact that it’s winter, and February is typically the worst month of the year for me, and you can imagine how I was feeling. It wasn’t good for my family either (YB looked so surprised the day I randomly burst into tears at the dinner table!).

After only a week, and with such short sessions, I’m not back to 100 percent yet. But I feel much better. My body feels pleasantly sore instead of creaky old lady sore, and I find myself yearning to go for a run or a bike ride. My problem areas are still my calves and hips, along with my back, which is suffering from annual hunched-over-freezing-cold achiness. The calves are improving, and I’m much more likely to start stretching them during the day while waiting for coffee or the elevator. Hips are more troublesome – I can’t manage cobbler pose at all – but at least now I know that my left hip is tighter than the right. My back, shoulders, and neck are all delighted to be practicing again too.

And emotionally I’m much happier, less snappish, less easily frustrated, and more patient and responsive to YB. I still have a lot of room for improvement – I had a bit of a breakdown on Sunday, and Tuesday night I got grumpy with F for no reason just because I was tired – but I feel like I’m starting from a calmer, more positive baseline. I really hope to keep it up!

 

The Yoga of Parenthood, Part 3: Happy Baby Pose February 19, 2013

Filed under: yoga — R. H. Ward @ 9:39 pm
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Happy Baby Pose

This was actually taken on Halloween – the toes are easily making it into her mouth now. I’ve been meaning to write a real “Pose of the Month” write-up on Happy Baby, since I’ve never done that one, but alas, it just hasn’t happened yet. But happy baby is happy!

 

Yoga 101 January 29, 2013

Filed under: yoga — R. H. Ward @ 1:03 pm
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In this interesting blog post on the YogaJournal website, Erica Rodefer Winters brings it back to the basics for those who are completely new to yoga. What’s the deal with that mat, and what does “yoga” mean anyway? I tried to tackle some of these basic questions in my series on yoga for beginners. What other things do yoga newbies need to know?

 

Creating Identity-Based Habits January 17, 2013

Filed under: reflections,yoga,yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 1:11 pm
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Here’s an interesting look at new year’s resolutions: Stick to Your Goals This Year by Using Identity-Based Habits. The idea is that most resolutions are appearance-based or performance-based (consider “I want to lose 20 pounds” or “I want to do more yoga”). Most people start off highly motivated but then lose momentum and don’t succeed at their goals. What this author, James Clear, recommends is that you focus not on changing your appearance or your performance, but that you set goals that change your identity. In essence, you become the kind of person who can accomplish what you want to do.

For example, if you have a goal of wanting to do more yoga, you might start off strong by getting to the yoga studio or the gym twice a week. But then life catches up with you, you get a cold, you miss a few sessions, and then despite your good intentions, you realize you haven’t done any yoga in a month. But “do more yoga” is a performance-based goal, which you fulfill by performing the task of showing up at class repeatedly. Consider instead an identity-based goal: something like “I want to be the kind of person who really cares about yoga”. Then you could start with small steps, like doing a sun salutation every morning. Once you’ve made that a part of your daily habits, you start to see yourself as a person whose yoga really matters to her, and you can branch out to larger yoga-related goals.

You could even try “I want to be a yoga teacher” (or, “I want to be a yoga teacher again”). Before my teacher training, I had an image in my head of what a yoga teacher is like, and that person was not me. Because I enrolled in a training program which required a significant investment of time and money, I felt like I was committed, and I began to put in my own time to make sure I got the most out of my investment. I practiced yoga and pranayama and meditation every day, read books about yoga, wrote this blog. The constant practice shaped me, and more importantly shaped my concept of myself, from “yoga-enjoying person” to “real actual yoga teacher”. I began to see myself differently, which only drove my yoga practice further as I became someone who not only wanted more but was capable of more. This example is a little extreme and beyond the scope of a new year’s resolution, but thinking about identity this way is just really interesting.

Recently I’ve started to become very invested in motherhood – I see myself as a mother first, and I’ve lost some of that concept of myself as a competent, confident yoga teacher. What do I need to do to rebuild that part of my identity? A regular yoga practice of some sort will have to be one of the first things I work on, but I also have to remember that a yoga teacher takes care of herself too (and, for example, doesn’t force herself to get up early to practice if the baby kept her up all night). Even just keeping up with this blog more often reminds me that I’m a yoga teacher. There are plenty of little ways I can start reinforcing my yoga identity again. Once I reconstruct my basic idea of myself as a yoga teacher, then I’ll be the kind of person who can accomplish even more: teaching a regular weekly class again, preparing and teaching a special workshop, maybe even planning the yoga and writing retreat that Heather and I have dreamed of. But that’s the long term – little steps first!

 

5 ways to stick to yoga goals January 11, 2013

Filed under: yoga,yoga lifestyle — R. H. Ward @ 1:45 pm
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I’m delighted with Rambling Yogini’s first post of 2013, 5 ways to stick to yoga goals. It’s a nice realistic way of looking at keeping your new year resolutions, and it made me, at least, feel a little bit optimistic about my yoga practice for the new year.

 

An Open Letter to Yoga Teachers November 27, 2012

Filed under: yoga — R. H. Ward @ 1:50 pm
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Today I’m sharing a post from AnytimeYoga: An Open Letter to Yoga Teachers. I agree with everything Tori lists here, because these are not only reasonable things to request, they’re reasonable things to expect. When I was actively teaching, these were things I tried to do, and I think I succeeded at least some of the time (although I haven’t been trained to use props so I teach with them only rarely). I think these are great reminders for any yoga teacher. Further, they’re a list of things that those new to yoga ought to know are reasonable things to want from a class and a teacher.

When I was a new yoga student, sometimes I felt something was strange but couldn’t articulate what it was, or thought it was just a “yoga thing”. But if you feel uncomfortable, and what’s happening is something Tori has described in her Open Letter, then that’s not a “yoga thing”, and it’s not cool. You deserve better, so either ask the instructor about it, or try a different yoga class. You and your unique body and your unique needs are welcome in yoga, and a good yoga teacher will make you feel that way.