Tag Archives: Yoga

Observing Yogis in their Natural Environment

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Last night, I had the opportunity to do my first observation of a vinyasa class for my teacher training.  I took 7 pages of notes, but I’m not going to cover them all here!  But, I do want to briefly discuss  my top “take away” lessons from this first observation.

  1. Wow.  Just wow.  Watching a room of people do yoga is so beautiful and inspiring and wonderful.
  2. I have always been impressed with my instructors, but I’m even more impressed right now.  Watching the teacher last night juggling leading the class, doing verbal and physical adjustments, assisting students who were unsure, making changes based on where the group was, controlling the music, monitoring the time, and fitting in pranayama and philosophy too.  Holy cow!
  3. While I suppose I know it intellectually, it was interesting to really “see” the facts that poses look so different in different bodies, understanding of directions really varies widely from person to person, and experience of difficulty and ease in a particular pose has a huge variation across a group.
  4. In my college classes, I tend to operate with the idea that you frequently  have to stir up a little bit of psychological discomfort or disease to get people to a place where they can learn something new or see it in a different way.  During this class, I watched this in action in yoga.  Small changes from “the norm” visibly shook students up and I could see it making them think more about what they were doing.  Nifty.
  5. There are some rather lofty and meta-epistemological ideas that can be presented in regard to yogic thought, and doing so in a way that reaches people but doesn’t overwhelm them or feel “preachy” is a hard balance.  I loved seeing it in action from the vantage point of an observer rather than a student.
  6. I’m not the only one who has a hard time staying upright in standing revolved twist poses.  Yay! 😉

So, yeah, this was very cool and I’m looking forward to doing it again, and also to writing up my more specific thoughts about the class structure etc. (though I probably won’t share that here).

It’s funny what a change in, literal, perspective will do to change  your mental perspective!

Namaste,

L

A Class Plan – AACK!

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Last night in yoga teacher training, we did our first “class plan” as a group.  The plan consisted of a step back flow, some sun salutations, and then two standing flows (we stopped there).  Remember how, a few weeks ago, I was a little worried about this whole venture and my ability?  Well, then I did the step back flow and sun salutations and chanting over and over until I had them cold.  And that made me feel better.  And then last night happened.  Yikes!

Image by Tambako the Jaguar on Flickr

As we sat on our mats trying to figure out what pose reasonably came next (that would work in the body efficiently, make sense, and fit in with the overall goal of moving toward backbends later in the class), everything I knew left my brain.  All Sanskrit poured directly out of my ears onto the hardwood and seeped between the boards into the earth.  Even my awareness of the poses in English became almost impossible to verbalize.  Holy hairy heck!  When I got up and actually tried to move from one pose into something else, I could come up with something, but I still could not verbalize it.  I couldn’t find the words in any way – they just would not come out of my head.  Wow.

So, yeah, ok.  That was disconcerting.  But, I’m working on my santosa, you know.  So, it is what it is.  What can I learn from it.  Well, a few things.

  1. I need to practice my Sanskrit way way more.  I have an app on my iPhone called Yoga Quiz, that is virtual flashcards.  So, I’ll be doing that when not at home and studying my asana sheets more when I am at home.
  2. I need to think through what the best way is for me to plan.  Maybe I need to actually move on my mat to come up with the poses and then write them down.
  3. I still need a lot more work/thought on the purpose of each pose, because things beyond the obvious are just not yet coming up for me.
  4. I want to know more about what students want/like in a class structure.

Number 1-3 are probably my individual issues, though I would certainly take any recommendations anyone has for facilitating these particular goals.  Number 4, however, is going to require some help.  I need to hear from other yoga practitioners.

So, tell me, dear reader, what kinds of preferences do you have for class sequencing?  Do you  like a lot of poses in a standing series before the next vinyasa?  Do you like a building in intensity to a peak point and then back down (sort of a bell curve) or more of a rolling hill sort of pattern?  Do you find it good/bad/neither/both when the class is clearly built around heading for a particular pose or type of pose?  Any other sequencing tidbits that might help me out?

Thanks in advance, and namaste,

L

Cultivating Santosa – A State of Contentment in the State of New Jersey

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One of the niyamas (observances) of yoga philosophy is santosa, or contentment.  It’s a niyama that I have been working on since I started my practice, but it’s one for which I have much work remaining.  Santosa is complex because of all of the ways that it is related to our understandings and beliefs about life.  We can cultivate contentment in our relationships, our jobs, our financial states, our physical beings, our surroundings, and so on.  When things seem “good,” it is easy to be content.  But when life isn’t working out the way you hope or think it should be, it is harder to be content.

In my own experience, I’ve had success over the last while in developing more contentment in my relationships.  I’m certainly not always content with them, but I don’t get as upset as I once did.  I rarely get really angry or depressed about a relationship (or the lack of one), and I have found that this has made my life and interactions with others seem much better, even when the patterns of behavior in the relationship don’t change much.

An area that I have mixed success with is in contentment with my physical self.  Sometimes it’s all good.  Even having a chronic auto-immune disease, and associated pain, doesn’t seem so bad at such times, as I can embrace the fact that it has taken me to places that I would not be otherwise.  Losing my hair in clumps at a young age created an opportunity for me to dissociate from the necessity of time and energy spent on hairstyles, and I love the idea of all the time I have not spent on that.  Other times, it’s harder.  I’ve been experiencing some extra bother recently from the RA pain, and there are days when I have to work hard not to feel angry about it.  And, as my friends and spouse can tell you, I’ve been a bit whiny about the weight I’ve gained recently (regardless of whether it’s maybe related to an increasing physical activity level).

I suppose I’m not on my own in this mixed success.  After all, would anyone have ever needed to write this down as an observance if it wasn’t sort of difficult to manage?  Notice that there isn’t an observance that reminds us to eat sweets or take naps.

Well, I feel a little bit like this post should be longer, but I’m going to just be content with what it is and say,

namaste,

L