On teaching...

There's an interesting conversation going around the cybershala on teaching yoga and more specifically on teaching Ashtanga...You can read some thoughts from Nobel, Patrick and Claudia which has gotten me thinking...

I never intended to teach yoga.

I started taking yoga classes in whatever style was cheapest when I was 17...it was 1994. I took generic "hatha" classes, I took vinyasa classes, and I dropped in on some classes that today I'm not even sure what it was exactly. In 2001, I took my first Ashtanga class, a full led primary. After an hour into the class, I was sure I was going to keel over dead at any moment and was definitely sure I wasn't going to make it through the whole class.

I made it through the class and went back.

In late 2002 I moved to Miami and in the spring of 2003, I went to my first Mysore style Ashtanga class. I had found my "yoga home". I was a bit intimidated at the beginning of my first Mysore class while I sorted out how the whole thing worked, but I left that first class delighted with the feeling of being able to steer my own practice under the guidance of a teacher. I had done a home Ashtanga practice for most of a year at that point and found the best of both worlds in the Mysore room.

You know that feeling when you first meet a new boyfriend or girlfriend and you think they're so amazing that you want them to meet every one of your friends, so that each one of your friends will now also know how completely amazing this new person is?

...well, that's how I felt about Mysore style Ashtanga yoga...I was absolutely infatuated!

I spent 4 years in Miami soaking up as much yoga as possible. Every year on my birthday, I took the day off of work and went to the early morning Mysore class. It was a present to myself; there was no where else that I would rather have been.

When, after 4 years, we moved from Miami to a much smaller town, I was a bit heartbroken to leave my teachers. I had searched google and could find no evidence of any Mysore style classes in my new town. One of my teachers said just before I left, "If you don't find what you're looking for in a yoga class there, then you teach it."

I didn't find any Mysore classes in the new town. There was a led class at a local studio that I attended, but it just wasn't the same...and often it left me frustrated. I knew that so much more depth was possible from a yoga practice. I tried convincing the studio owner to try teaching Mysore classes. She wasn't interested. She was of the opinion that any kind of hands-on adjustment was going to cause injury and that I was going to "yoga hell" for even suggesting that they could be helpful. Most frustrating though, was not the lack of adjustments or assists, it was the loss of that feeling of steering my own practice, but with the support and encouragement of someone who had navigated those same waters before me.

...so I did a teacher training...200 hours over the course of about a year and a half.

...and I started a class

For the first year, I taught a class once a week at a community center for free. I had 2, sometimes 3, students. I was honest about how new I was to teaching. I'm fairly certain I learned more than the students did in that year, but they found something in those practices that kept them coming back. For that, I am grateful beyond words.

I did learn some useful, broad perspective sorts of things in the teacher training that I took...but really, what I've learned so far about teaching, has come from 3 places:

1-my own personal, daily practice...daily time on the mat

2-my teaching practice...teaching Mysore and learning from each class

3-from my teachers...guidance and ecouragement that comes from their years of experience

I've been teaching Mysore style Ashtanga yoga for about 4 1/2 years now and practicing for about 10. In the lifetime of an Ashtanga practice, that is barely any time at all.

On a more aware sort of day, I realize that teaching yoga is much like meditation. It's not something you do. It's something that might happen when the conditions are right. My job is to help students learn to set up the right conditions and then get out of the way, so the practice itself can do the teaching. Some days I do a better job than others. My teaching practice, like my personal time on the mat, is exactly that, a practice.

On Having a Teacher...

My teacher arrives in 2 hours! A week of practice with him starts tomorrow morning.

These weeks of practice with my teacher are something that I look forward to like nothing else. Months of quiet home practice alone mean that a week of practice with my teacher stands out in stark relief. I work harder; practice is more intense and digs just a little deeper than in the quiet mornings alone.

I've managed to tweak my SI joint again...arg. I'm mentally preparing to modify leg-behind-head if needed, but still hoping I won't have to...ahhh attachment (*wry smile*).

So as I look forward to the upcoming week of practice with my teacher, I want to share a couple posts from other Ashtangis who've written recently on what it means to have a teacher and to be a student.

First from David Garrigues: Guru Purnima 2011

and then from Alex Medin interviewed by Deborah Crooks: Talking with Alex Medin

Practice posts to come this week!

Thoughts on The Practice of Learning to Teach

...so the final post from my week of practice with my Mysore teacher...

I usually spend some time watching David teach when I attend Mysore practice weeks with him. He usually teaches at least 2 classes a day when teaches the "Mysore weeks" and I generally practice at one of the sessions and watch the other. He has always been very supportive of this. Watching my teacher teach is one of the ways that I learn to be a better teacher myself. I am in awe every time I watch a group of students grow in their practice over the course of 5 days with David as their guide.

It is a particularly special week when I hand David the reins and turn my own students and studio over to him. His ability to see what is going on in a students physical and mental practice always amazes me!

Watching David teach always reminds me of how much I have to learn as a teacher. Here are a few things that I was reminded of during the week:

1. Teaching is a practice and it is a lifelong practice just like asana practice.

2. There are no short cuts to being a good teacher. I will only continue to grow as a teacher, by teaching, acknowledging my mistakes and learning from them. Time, patience and practice are the only way.

3. What I teach comes out of what I practice.

4. I need a teacher to guide my teaching practice just as I need a teacher to guide my asana practice.

5. A sense of humor is absolutely required for teaching this practice :)

Thoughts on Choosing a Teacher

...so it's been total radio silence on the blog for a couple weeks. The daily schedule ramped up with all kinds of busyness as I got things ready to host my Mysore teacher for a week. I followed up on the Mysore practice week with a few days of vacation in the pacific northwest and then returned and promptly caught a cold. Finally, things are settling back into their places and I'm finding time to get some thoughts out into the blogosphere from an awesome week of practice with my teacher.

...so why have a teacher anyway? Does anyone really need a teacher?

I can't answer those questions for anyone else, but I definitely need a teacher. For me personally, there are two layers of practice that I'm most aware of. (I suspect there are more layers that I'm unaware of.) I am most aware of the layer of physical practice and the layer of mental practice. I have stayed with my current teacher because he has been able to guide me through both.

Here are a few reasons I still practice with the same teacher that I've been practicing with for the past 6 years or so.

1. He won't take me anywhere that I'm not willing to go. He will do his best to encourage and explain new poses, transitions, or deeper expressions of poses, but if I really don't think I should do something at any particular moment, he never forces it.

2. He is continually asking me to see the practice in new ways, so it never gets too comfortable or routine.

3. He's been able to convince me that the impossible is really possible.

4. He's not in a hurry. He's patiently watched my practice evolve over years and has never once suggested that I wasn't moving along fast enough.

5. I trust him, personally and professionally. This trust both comes out of and enables all the qualities I've described above.

As a teacher myself I only hope I can someday guide my students towards the same sense of vision and patience in practice that my teacher has helped me find in mine.