Live Your Yoga

It’s been some time since I’ve posted on this blog. I am happy to note that we’ve succeeded (sort of) in growing (some) things. The garden project is a continuing adventure. By next year, we should have it down.

I’ve felt somewhat neglectful of this blog, but then decided that it was okay, being that it’s more important to live my yoga than to write about it.

My public teaching schedule is limited lately. I’ve been kept rather busy in other areas. My 2 classes at Spectrum are going well, the energy has improved there and I feel like I owe that to Rebecca and Alice. I feel so honored that they chose to continue with me from Om and Garden, and it’s like a little bit of that sacred space came with them.

Or it could be that having them there has allowed me to free up the energy I’ve been holding in. Either way, I am so grateful to have them there.

Life and its daily rhythms are carrying on. Each day is filled. Plenty of chaos. Plenty of love.

I keep breathing.

I had two phenomenal classes on Friday. Different venues, different students, different atmospheres. Both however, had amazing energy! Jai! I was so elevated from those classes. The experience and sacred sharing that can happen during yoga is endless.

It’s the energy of my students and the energy we build together. They are wonderful. We do not just share as teacher/student and the practice of asana. We share life. We share precious moments of intimacy. We share the blessing of simply being together.

I end every class with a message of gratitude for my students. And I mean it deeply every time.

One of my students brought me a dozen eggs today in lieu of payment. The eggs came from her very own chickens. Does it get any better than that? I think not.

Here’s the thing. At least, it’s the thing for me. A yoga class that lasts about an hour and fifteen, generally feels like at least 3 hours for the teacher. Not in a bad way. It’s just the energy expenditure that goes into it. So after a day of teaching 2 or 3 classes, I am absolutely exhausted. On top of that, I also used to spend way too much time planning my classes. You know, this particular sequence for the warm up, this pranayama exercise, this reading. W2 to W1 to Parvrita Trikonasana… and on and on and on.

I don’t plan my classes anymore. I made a comment to my husband this morning while gathering my belongings for class and my daughter for school, that it was good that I didn’t plan my classes anymore, otherwise I wouldn’t have time for anything else. Yes, this was an exaggeration. And yes, I do still plan my classes occasionally. When I mentioned this to Niko this morning, and also asked if it was terrible that I didn’t, he made a good point: if I take the time to plan, and then my student base is completely different than the class I originally intended, well, what really is the point? That is the point.

When I was in teacher training, the instructor said this: There is the class you plan to teach, the class you actually teach, and then the class you wish you would have taught. God was she right.

This is something that you learn only by practice. When you’re fresh out of teacher training, you spend countless hours with your pen and paper, your notes, your mat. You work on perfecting your class design. It’s necessary. Eventually, you begin to figure out that even without the plan, everything will be alright.

So when I got to class this morning, intending to at least make some sort of standing practice sequence, in walked 2 new students. The first, with a recently broken wrist, in therapy, and having only practiced yoga by video and not for a number of years. The second (husband of first) had been to yoga classes about a decade ago, and had no admitted experience. He asked if it was necessary that he take his shoes off.

So here is where my husband’s point was proven. I had to throw everything out the window. Here was my vinyasa class, minus the downdog, updog, and absolutely everything that puts pressure on the wrists. As well as most of the flow in itself, as I was breaking down most of the poses to allow for complete comprehension. The class turned into a beginner’s foundation. It was fun, and a great lesson for me as a teacher.

My noon class turned out to be equally spontaneous. With only 2 students, and both regulars, it allowed for a nice environment of intimacy. On top of that, we spent the first ten minutes or so chatting and giggling, our own brand of yoga. I practiced through most of the class with them, and used my own body to guide our next move. That is the real vinyasa, right? Letting the breath guide the body into its perfect form.

So the day was a great reminder that, once again, everything will be okay. There is no reason to doubt, or panic, if you don’t have the perfect class plan mapped out with extensive detail… Chill. And let the flow begin.

I first discovered yoga twelve years ago, but I cannot say that I’ve been practicing yoga for twelve years. I knew from that moment of discovery however, that I had found something special. I didn’t know the depth of that realization. I only recognized the physical manifestation of health that my body exuded after asana practice. Pranayama found its way to me in bits and pieces in the beginning, as well as other yogic practices that I knew naught. Following Hittleman’s 28 day plan, I experienced things that I couldn’t name. I practiced Uddiyana bandha without truly knowing what systems of my body I was affecting. There was innocence then and a simple love for the experience.

I didn’t know about my edge until I took my first class, and even then, it wasn’t labeled an edge. It was taking my boundaries to new levels and moving to that point of ‘sweet discomfort’. It was watching my first teacher move through Paschimottanasana trying to explain to me how she was moving from her hips, not her waist, and not rounding her back; something completely foreign to me at the time. Now, all these years later I can experience that moment differently. I can appreciate and understand what she was trying to express. I can feel my spine lengthening as I grow out from my hips, the crown of my head shining forward. The awareness that has come out of the experience of the practice has been invaluable.

I’ve been through a few trainings, many workshops, and countless yoga classes over the last decade of my life. I thought that I had certain things figured out. What I’m discovering is that most of it has been an illusion.

The second yoga class I ever took, the teacher saw something in me that inspired her to take me under her wing. Soon after, I began to substitute her classes. Because of that experience, I thought it was my destiny to be a yoga teacher. I remember getting so nervous before every class, something that I still occasionally do. The sweaty palm, shaky voice kind of nervousness. For years after that, I had a boyfriend that said I was never going to be a yoga teacher and that I didn’t have what it took. I believed him even though I pretended not to, and spent many years trying to prove us both wrong.

I think the point I’m trying to make here is that all this time I’ve been trying to be a yoga teacher for someone else. Even up until my last training, I was still living with delusions of my ‘false self’ and continue to sometimes question if I’m beyond that. A part of my reasoning for undertaking the Kripalu program was because I thought that I needed it. More training equals more confidence. And that’s what I needed to be the yoga teacher. Confidence. What I’ve discovered through this process is that I’ve used confidence (part of the illusion) as an excuse to keep going, and that I’m not sure why I’m teaching yoga in the first place. I’m not sure if I even want to anymore, or if I ever did. And most importantly, that that’s okay.

I took a training to become a better yoga teacher. I took another training because my ego told me to. My higher self was being silent throughout and letting my ego take the lead. She knew the real reason I needed the Kripalu program. She knew I needed to come back to the beginning to find again the simple love for the experience. Kripalu brought me back into my body, where somehow my higher self knew that I desperately longed to be. I remembered that I loved being there.

My yoga has changed. Not in the way I teach it necessarily. Not yet. Though I do find myself bringing a specific Kripalu-esqe style into my classes, I feel like it was always there, I just didn’t register the origin. I can see an evolution coming soon. I’m crawling out of a box. I’m not sure if when I emerge, I’ll stop being a ‘yoga teacher’, or if I will just change the way I teach. I don’t know. I do know that I love yoga. Love. And that it will be a part of the rest of my life. I also continue to feel deep connections to being a teacher, period. How the two come together is really not important.

I thought a lot about what I wanted to touch on in this post, what I wanted to convey about my Kripalu experience. In the end, I took my pen to paper with a blank slate and an empty mind. My heart spoke, and this is what she said:

I made a comment one morning during sharing, and touched on it again earlier in this writing, about how my yoga was changing. I understand now what that means. My yoga is finally in the process of becoming mine. I am changing from those preconceived notions of what I thought yoga was supposed to be in my life. Through the influences and teachers in my life, I have become a version of those teachings. I am not inferring that this is a bad thing. I am only expressing the lesson that I have learned about my own individual nature. I also know now that it will continue to evolve. I am not restricted to a single teacher or philosophy. And though I have highly respected teachers in my life that I adore immensely, and will continue to do so and learn from, I am not destined to be just an example of their teaching.

I’m not sure what will happen next. I only know that I am now more at ease with the mystery.

I cannot say that it was Kripalu yoga specifically that brought me to these conclusions; conclusions that are not just about how I practice yoga, but how I live my life. I do know however that I came to these realizations during and after my experience in the program and that without it, I may not have done so. These teachings I will cherish, and from them I know that I will continue to grow.

Annoyed. Bothered. Quite honestly on the edge of absolute pissiness.

What brings me to these feelings of negativity, you ask? Oh yogini of gratitude?

Need I say more?

Daylight savings time.

I’ve been dreading it for weeks. Compiling this momentum of passionate frustration into imaginary letters to my government officials. Knowing that it was going to come, and at least for this time around, that I wasn’t going to be able to do a damn thing about it.

Last night I agreed to fill in a last minute class this morning. I agreed, forgetting that I’d be waking up an hour earlier, before the sun had even made his appearance. I wasn’t upset so much about the loss of that hour of sleep, I was upset that it was so unnecessary. I was upset because once again, some other force, that of the material, not natural world, is trying to undermine the beautiful and rhythmic flow of Mother Nature.

Why?! So we’ll have longer daylight hours. Well here’s the thing. We do not have more daylight. Just because you “take a foot off the top of the blanket and sew it to the bottom, doesn’t mean you have a longer blanket”. Just because you change our clocks, hoping that we’ll use that extra hour to go spend our money on unnecessary frivolities, or you think you’re “conserving” energy by allowing us to think it’s 8:00 when in fact it’s 7. Maybe we won’t turn on our lights until later? No. But we’ll leave them on just as long as we did before. Because our bodies are trying to listen to the cycles of the earth- not your damn regulatory control on our pocketbooks.

And thank you for taking away my precious morning sunrise, as I send my daughter off to school just past the break of dawn…

Stop.

Breathe.

When I got to the studio this morning I carried with me my frustration. Before my students arrived, I sat on my mat and took in my breath deep from my belly. I filled my heart with that breath and used it to relax my shoulders. I felt the sensations in my body and mind. I watched the motions of my thoughts as they bickered back and forth, between steadiness and chaos and allowed this all to happen without judgment. When my students arrived, they too were experiencing frustration, so we let ourselves express our feelings- and as a group agreed to allow our practice to melt away that tension and lift us up above and beyond the constraints of time.

By the end of class, we all felt much lighter.

So yes, my breath and my practice helped me move through the matter with more grace, but I am still frustrated with the system itself.

I understand that because I live and function in society, I have to follow the rules. I have to get my daughter to school on time, show up for work, and make my scheduled appointments. In order to do this, I need to let go and flow. While some people will feel like they’ve gained something by setting their clocks ahead, I feel like I’ve lost something…

And while some people might feel that I am overreacting or expressing too much rage on the subject, oh yogini of gratitude, I feel like I’m honoring my path and living my yoga. To hold back emotion, when it is not necessarily harmful to others, is to suppress the self. I am breathing. I am carrying on.

Kripalu yoga teaches brilliantly: Breathe, Relax, Feel, Watch, Allow.

I’ve decided to start focusing on themes in my classes. A new project, if you will. Inspired by my “Grace Cards” by Cheryl Richardson, I’m going to pick a card a week and focus on that specifically for all 6 classes, with slight variation of course.

For example, this week I pulled “Mindfulness”. I’ll present the term as a thought process and allow students to come up with their own idea of what it is for them. The cards have a passage on the back, but I think I’ll leave that out so that each student can access their own imagination.

And on the subject, I want to be more mindful of bringing those things I care most about back into my classes. Also those things that I am still learning. I cannot let my teaching get stagnant with the same ol’ class plan time after time. I have to continue to stay inspired as a teacher, and as a student.

Peace & love, y’all.