Teaching Yoga will always be a Challenge / Week 8 of Training

My five week Yoga teaching session is over.  It was a great experience and I looked forward to 7:00 on Thursdays with great anticipation.   I averaged about 12 people a class and I introduced the students to about 40 poses over course of the five weeks.    I really like to focus my own practice on both strength and flexibility, and that is what I tried to focus on during my classes.  Since I had the luxury of an hour and a half,  I was able to do a good amount of teaching and demonstrating while allowing everyone to have plenty of time to practice the poses.    During the last class,  I tried to just lead the class through a Yoga practice without doing any demonstrating and it was good to see how they all knew the poses and were able to follow along for the most part.   My goals were to introduce everyone to Yoga and to prepare them to go to a class at a studio and be comfortable in doing so. I think I accomplished both of these goals.  If just one person continues with a Yoga practice,  I will  consider myself more than successful. 




I learned a lot about teaching and myself over the past five weeks.    The biggest take away for me is that you cannot prepare enough for classes.    I constantly refined  what I wanted to teach and went through my class plan in my home Yoga room a few times before each class.  Even then,  I had to refer to my notes for the next pose or a cue that I wrote down at times.     I have to learn  how to better cue poses comfortably and with ease and to be more concise and remember each step in a pose or a flow.  More than a few times I missed a step or a piece of a flow or a pose.   I also realize that I have to better understand how to notice , approach, and teach adjustments to individuals while I have a everyone in a pose.  I will have to get more proficient about why we do poses and how they impact our body.    This should  will come with study and  time and it is good to have a direction to take my learning.  Finally,  I have to be focused on what I am saying.    People are really focusing on your words and I owe it to them to be clear and concise as I felt sometimes I was not. 

I was pretty up front with everyone about using these classes as an opportunity to become a better teacher and I really appreciate the fact that everyone was open to that.    I told them a few times that I am trying something out and they more than obliged.  There is no better teacher than experience.

Week 8 of training is 2 weeks in the past.    We spent a great Saturday working on lower body therapy and simulating difficult poses using props.   We started the class going through about 10 poses described in the "Light on Yoga" book but BKS Iyengar.    His descriptions are very technical and very focused on getting into the highest level of a pose.      We then took these 10 poses and worked them through using props and alternatives set ups.    It was really great to see how using blocks, bolsters, or straps  a person can get the same benefit from a modified pose as they can from the "harder' version of that pose. 


Our Sunday was spent on looking at the front body line and working through a sequence addressing those muscles and ligaments.   We also spent a good amount of time building a sequence toward an assigned "Apex" pose.    An Apex pose it generally the hardest pose in a class and the class should be set up in such a way as to prepare the students for that pose.   The take away for  me is that the
sequence that is built needs to get the body ready for the Apex pose and that all cues used in the Apex pose should already be used in previous poses within the sequence.   It was sort of an "aha" moment. 


By the end of the weekend,  after 6 - 7 hours of Yoga, I was sore in more than a few places.    A good sore,  but sore none the less.

Namaste.