Ultimately what will give a yoga teacher her style or maybe more accurately her voice is life experience. I learned huge lessons from having had osteoarthritis for nearly two decades, before getting total hip replacements. For years, I’ve been in the classroom of life that teaches the practice of compassion, nurturing and authenticity. Now, ageing is teaching me new lessons that embrace those same concepts.
Audacious as it may sound to your ears, dear reader, I can only say I teach Eve Yoga.
Time doesn’t quite fly always. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it plods. I know it’s forty years of teaching yoga because I can add up the students I’ve taught along the way. It’s a lot!
I was privileged to meet Swami Satyadharma Saraswati while attending the Divine Feminine Conference. She spoke cogently and passionately on some aspects of yoga that might ordinarily be deemed esoteric. In her manner of explaining, abstract concepts became alive for me and accessible.
I always felt that Gita lived the life of a nun. She dressed in white and was steeped in the wisdom of spiritual texts. Gita devoted herself utterly and completely to the needs of her father and brother after her mother’s death. She worked tirelessly to ‘reveal’ yoga to the world, travelling and teaching, even as her health was failing.
I’ve taught many different aspects of yoga, but I do have my favourite subjects. I was able to teach one of these yesterday–yoga adjustments–at Forster Yoga Studio. I presented theory and practice on the hands-on, physical way of instructing students in postures.
In an article in “Yoga Suits Her, I described three main styles of learning. One of them is kinaesthetic. I’m someone who learns this way–hands-on, experientially. I’ve discovered through my teaching over thirty-five years that a disproportionate number of yoga teachers learn kinaesthetically. […]
Back when I was just a just a youngster in my Iyengar yoga training, I attended six weeks of classes at the Yoga Institute in Poona, India. People seldom go to study with the Iyengars without the experience being life-changing; there’s so much to learn.
On one occasion, Mr. Iyengar’s son, Prashant, taught us in a general class. We warmed up for about an hour with standing poses, with special attention paid to tadasana (mountain pose). […]
It would have been nice to start out in my teaching career as a completely relaxed yoga teacher, but that doesn’t often happen. Perhaps that old line about it taking years to be an overnight success is valid.
Planning and plotting have been long-held habits in all areas of my life. I could also say that they have been expressed as perfectionism. Little by little, though, I have been learning to trust what I know and what I have embodied.
I’m part of a yoga teachers practice group which meets monthly. We get together for a led-practice and then breakfast afterwards.
It’s a mutual gathering. No one person is the boss of it. The person leading and venue of the group rotates each month. This is semi-rural Australia, so we teachers come from all over. Some have to travel 1.5 hours to attend.
Besides enjoying the benefits of learning from each other, we get to float questions. For instance, last Saturday we were talking about how some teachers present their yoga classes off-the-cuff. […]
I’ve taught many different aspects of yoga, but I do have my favourite subjects. I was able to teach one of these yesterday–yoga adjustments–at Forster Yoga Studio. I presented theory and practice on the hands-on, physical way of instructing students in postures.
In an article in “Yoga Suits Her, I described three main styles of learning. One of them is kinaesthetic. I’m someone who learns this way–hands-on, experientially. I’ve discovered through my teaching over thirty-five years that a disproportionate number of yoga teachers learn kinaesthetically. […]
Decision time: yes or no?
This is the exciting time of year when you might be considering learning something new. Cuban dancing, contract bridge, an on-line undergraduate course…. Or, you may have been thinking about deepening your understanding of a subject about which you are already knowledgeable.
If you are a keen yoga practitioner, you probably have thought about doing a yoga teacher training at one time or another. […]
I’m saddened when I hear of certain kinds of yoga teacher trainings that happen factory-style. Two week courses or even a month are just not enough.
Why would ‘caveat emptor’ apply to yoga teacher training? Probably because the trainings are now commodified, as yoga teaching has become an popular industry. Generally we can enjoy the fact that yoga is more mainstream, but for those considering teacher training, they have to do their do their due diligence. What is it that makes a great training course?
Professional Development for Yoga TeachersLast week I submitted details and documents to Yoga Australia (association) that support the professional development I’ve completed in the period July 1, 2014 till now. This is the method whereby I maintain my status as a senior yoga teacher in this organisation.You can’t get away from P.D. No matter what field you are in these days, you must keep up with your profession. […]
‘Be great, none of this humble stuff!’, said friend Heather to me as I trundled off to teach an out-of-town yoga workshop. I can see why she would advise me thus.
I probably come across as not overly ambitious when I teach. I don’t mean to be blasé. I do a lot of planning for any seminars I teach. If anything, I over-plan. When I do that, I end up more worried about my plan than being present to workshop participants. […]
I don’t usually study with other yoga teachers and here’s why: I live hours from any major city centre and tend to stay close home. I like doing my own practice in the Yoga Shed. And, well, okay, I’m a bit of a snob. I want to study with the best when I take time to travel long distance and spend time with a teacher.
Recently, when the opportunity to study with Donna Farhi arose, I leapt at it.
She and I go back. […]
This last weekend, I had the privilege of teaching a group of yoga teachers and keen students in a workshop entitled “The Art of Adjusting.” In the lunch break I spoke to one of the participants about her concern that her classes seem to stay small, even though she’s been teaching them for some time.
What do we mean when we say a small class? These days classes can have fifty students in them, or more. […]
In 1978 I fell under the spell of a yoga teacher named Martyn Jackson. Martyn taught a kind of yoga that he’d learned in Pune, India from his teacher, B.K.S. Iyengar.He alleged that, in the sixties, he was one of few western students to study with Mr. Iyengar.
Martyn went to Pune from New Zealand to undertake one-to-one lessons with Mr. Iyengar. He had a story about arriving on Mr. […]
Oh dear!
As I edited this post, what stood out in the first paragraphs were all the I’s I used to get my thoughts across. I just don’t know how to write without being personal! It’s a style for which I can forgive myself, and hopefully you will, too.
I don’t pretend to be enlightened in any shape or form. Being a yoga teacher doesn’t mean you are immune to any of the frailties and suffering of humankind. In fact, you might just end up like me being even more sensitive to them. […]
Why do I do it? Why do I watch a television series about not-so-nice people doing things that are definitely not nice. It could simply be a fascination for the shadowy, seamy part of life, but it could also be because the programming is excellent. And, sometimes the shows I watch stimulate my thinking about the way humans behave.
For instance, watching an episode of True Detective last week, I heard the cynical protagonist intone, “This is a world where nothing is solved… time is a flat circle. […]
Yoga is ancient. It is forever deep and wise. […]