Rox Does Yoga

I realized I haven’t talked about my yoga teaching here for a while. I’m still teaching at Awaken in Media, PA, now on Tuesday nights at 6:30. Two weeks ago I hit my highest turnout with five students; last week I had two students; and last night I just had one, but that’s okay because it was Stacey and she really really needed some yoga. Kyle is still working on improvements and upgrades in the yoga space – every week something new happens (this week: marker board in the stairwell, folder holder for the yoga binder, and major progress in the third massage room). The space looks better and better every week! I’m looking forward to when he feels ready to do a grand opening and start getting some more people in the door, although if that happens in May, I won’t have a ton of teaching time left before Yoga Baby’s arrival. Last night’s odd moment: when a young woman opened the door mid-class looking for the doula training workshop. I sent her downstairs to the Wellness Center, but it must have been pretty odd from her perspective to be looking for a doula workshop and to find a pregnant lady doing yoga. I hope she comes back for yoga class sometime, I tried not to be scary.

My tenure teaching prenatal yoga has now come to an end: the person who was teaching the class at EEY has now returned, so she’ll be resuming the class this week. I really loved teaching prenatal, but I have to admit I’m relieved. The Sunday morning timeslot wasn’t ideal for me, and the fact that a teacher was needed in March/April also wasn’t ideal, since I had pre-existing plans for three out-of-town weekends (friends in NJ, a business trip to AZ, and family in Pittsburgh). N was very understanding but all the travel meant that I only had the chance to teach the class three times. I was also so busy last month that I didn’t have time to research prenatal yoga nearly as much as I would have liked, and ended up relying on (1) how my own body feels during yoga right now, (2) things I have heard from my midwife, other pregnant ladies, or other yoga teachers, and (3) some things I picked up in the few prenatal classes I’d taken as a student. I’m incredibly grateful to have had this experience, though! At some point in the future, I’d really like to get some training specifically in prenatal yoga and have the chance to teach it properly. In the meantime, now that original teacher is back, I’m looking forward to taking the class with someone who actually knows what she’s doing! I’m also looking forward to going to church more often, and occasionally sleeping in and eating a leisurely breakfast with F in our jammies, neither of which is possible when I had to teach at 10:30.

I’ll be really interested to see what happens to my teaching after Yoga Baby arrives. I definitely don’t want to push myself to do too much too soon, or to teach when I’m exhausted and sleep-deprived (which I’m sure will be the case for at least the first month of YB’s life). On the other hand, I don’t want to lose my confidence as a teacher, I think it would be nice to have one reason a week to leave the house, and I know that picking up my yoga again will help me get back in shape after the birth. Overall I just want to be sure to be kind to myself and not to push it if what I really need is rest.

So far I’ve taught prenatal yoga at EEY three times, and I’ve learned a lot from every single class. I try to focus on poses that anyone in the class can do, but that’s a difficult task. At 12 weeks, a pregnant woman is likely to have most of her usual mobility and flexibility, and it’s possible she feels great and has lots of energy, but she may also be feeling tired or sick. At 38 weeks, a pregnant woman’s mobility is much more limited and she’s likely to be moving more slowly and getting tired more easily. And every pregnant woman is different and has different needs. At my current 25 weeks, I definitely move more slowly and tire more easily than I did a month ago, so I’m finding that the yoga I need is changing: a vinyasa class used to invigorate me, but now it just wears me out. I’m still capable of a lot of what I could do before, but as a yoga teacher my pre-pregnancy baseline is a little different from most women’s, so I can’t assume that my students can achieve certain poses just because I still can. I also can’t assume that my students, many of whom are new to yoga, will be able to catch when a pose isn’t quite right for their bodies to do. I’ve had a lot of experience and a lot of training and even I still occasionally do too much or press on through a pose that doesn’t feel right; I can’t expect a student in my class, especially a student new to yoga, especially a pregnant student dealing with her body feeling all kinds of different lately, to be able to make those calls with the level of accuracy and safety that I can for myself.

My experience as a pregnant yogini really brings home to me the importance of giving my students options for modifying postures. I feel like I spend a lot of my class talking through different options. For example, in a lunge, you can leave your hands on the floor, bring them to your knee or hips or heart center, or raise them to the sky. Depending on how I feel on a particular day, I’ve taken every one of those options at least once in the past few weeks, whereas before my pregnancy I’d almost always lift my arms overhead. I try to emphasize to my students that they should do whatever feels right for their bodies today, regardless of what I or the others in the class may be doing; I remind them to focus on their breath and to rest whenever they need to. I try to remember to tell them that if they need to run downstairs to the bathroom at any time during class, they should go ahead. And I try to give them tidbits of knowledge about what their bodies are doing during pregnancy, things that I’ve read or learned from my midwife or experienced myself. Here’s why it’s helpful to stretch the pelvic floor muscles; here’s what’s going on with our joints right now and why it’s important not to overstretch; here’s a pose that will give you some relief if you get leg cramps during the night like I do. But mostly, I try to give them options. Lots and lots of options.

And I think that these experiences will make me a better yoga teacher overall. Most of the time, the students who come to my regular hatha yoga classes are fit and able to practice at or near my level, but that won’t always be the case. I never know when a new or older or differently abled student might show up, and I want to be able to give that student options too. I never know when one of my regular students may be feeling extra tired or have a cold coming on and want to take it easy. I never know when a pregnant student may show up for a regular hatha class. Part of the challenge is being able to think on my feet and adapt to a particular group’s needs, but the real challenge is to be able to provide options to my students in a regular class, any regular class at any time, while still engaging the more advanced students. That’s pretty hard to do, but it’s an essential part of my job. My yoga is not about making every person do each pose exactly the same way; my yoga is about helping each student to find what his or her own yoga is.

(Unrelated to the main content of this post, I just wanted to let folks know that Awaken Massage and Yoga has moved to a new location and my teaching schedule has switched from Wednesdays to Tuesdays. Check out Awaken’s website or my Schedule page for details!)