Any teacher worth their salt – it doesn’t matter if the subject matter is yoga or biology – will be learning from their students as well as teaching them. That’s how teaching becomes an art, and it’s what makes teaching a great profession.
One of the things I had to learn about some students is that they either cannot, or have a great deal of trouble, distinguishing between discomfort and pain.
I believe most pain, especially when it is acute and extremely intense is to be avoided. […]
Yoga teaching
Treasure Trove
(The photo has nothing to do with the content of this post, but is redolent of my rural setting, so I wanted to share it with you.)
Many friends of mine have parents who are either moving into aged care facilities or, sadly, have moved on to Another Plane. As a result, family homes need to be cleaned up, put on the market and sold. My friends complain how much work it is to sort out possessions amassed over a long life, especially when the relative has been a serious hoarder.
I don’t save stuff. I’m the opposite. […]
Yoga &Humour
Amazing what you can do when you are given completely new hips. (Only kidding.)
I’ve always thought that yoga poses are inherently funny. Sometimes I look around a class of students who have voluntarily submitted to being put into Kurmasana or Yoginidrasana or Simhasana and think we are raving mad. Or, how about the studios where ropes dangle from walls or the beams with students hanging upside-down like flying foxes in Sirsasna. […]
Teach Yourself Yoga
In 1997 Simon and Schuster published a book I wrote called, “Teach Yourself Yoga”. It took me 5 months to write it, in between teaching classes. I was really chuffed that I could pull this off, being a first time book writer and all. I remember getting a note from my editor after I sent her the first chapter of the book and she wrote back saying, “You’ve hit the exact market we’re aiming for. Keep on keeping on.” I delivered the completed manuscript on the day it was due. […]
The Art of Adjustment
A couple of years ago now, I wrote a book which I was very proud of called “The Art of Adjustment”. I wrote it in collaboration with Monica Redondo who was mainly the designer and photographer. Jane Thomas is the beautiful model (pictured) in the images.
It would seem that the book has sadly been languishing on the web site where it is for sale – liveyogalife.com
I don’t know why this is. I guess I’m more a writer than a sales promoter. […]
Sequencing
I’ve spent part of this beautifully sunny (at last!) day writing out yoga sequences for a project* that will consume me for some time.
There’s an find art to designing a yoga sequence:
•First of all, a sequence needs to have a beginning, middle and end. […]
De-Brief
Words are so important. What you say and how you say it.
I had three different wordings for the workshop I taught on Sunday.
1) Working with the Older Yoga Student
2) Yoga: A Companion for Life
3) Ageing: A Possibility
I went with the first title because of exigency. I was on a deadline and I hadn’t yet conceived of the second and third titles. […]
The Upside of Upside-Down
The scrutineer knocked off early and went fishing, hoping to catch some fish which would eventually become bloaters once cured with careful smoking. Unfortunately, not long after the fisherman dropped his killick, his little dinghy was scuppered by a passing ocean liner.*
Can you pick out the words from today’s Herald crossword puzzle?
Do you believe solving crosswords is aerobics for your brain? Can you merely grapple with the clues, even when you are ultimately defeated by them, and still ward off dementia? I know that my brain sure hurts when I wrestle unsuccessfully with cryptic cross word puzzles. […]
Extracurricular Yoga
A woman called today and wanted some information about yoga for ageing. Why me? Two reasons, I guess. I’ve advertised I’m teaching a workshop on “Working with Older Yoga Students” and I am older.
The caller said she had been a yoga teacher and stopped teaching because she was too old to be bending in all sorts of positions. How old? Sixty-two. I said, “Well, yoga is more than doing postures.” “I know that,” she replied.
It’s so much more that I don’t know even know it all. […]
Sigh
Those of you who have practised yoga with me know I am a sigher. Why hold back? Sometimes yoga is so delicious pleasure begins to burble up from the belly, the kidneys, the heart, and who would want to stifle such an organic impulse. Add voice to it, and, voila, perfection!
I’ve traveled miles on this U.S. trek, now drawing to a close, maybe 450 miles in Arizona alone. Sighs have been too few and far between. […]
Routines Take 2
Happily, a few years ago on another trip to San Francisco, I discovered a yoga school, would you believe based Iyengar-style, nearby.
I can walk there from Cousin Merle’s on 8th Avenue, which I did this morning. Much better using the studio instead of the small floor space of our visitor’s accommodation.
I did a Level one (read “beginner-ish) class with a very good beginner-ish (read 1 year) teacher. […]
I'd like to say I'm better but…
…no. If anything my cold is worse (mucous, hard to write that without the “yuk”) and now something else is happening, a sort of southerly movement of scratchiness down into my chest. I found myself apologising to Daniel this morning for my libido suffering from this cold, too. Sigh. Talk about shooting oneself in the foot.
Nevertheless somethings are under control: my yoga practice, for one, and I even managed to teach a class tonight, for another.
Also, I have an unblunted appreciation for the signs of spring that appearing all around our garden and our neighbourhood…. […]
Yoga Practice Cycles
A yoga teacher trainee whom I was working with asked a smart question: What should I practice when?
If you do the same sequence of poses every single day, as in Astanga Vinyasa Yoga, it’s not a problem. However, what do you do if your practices are more flexible?
Well, it depends on quite a lot of factors – season, age, menstruation, pregnancy, menopause (male or female), time of day, day of the week, etc.
To help my trainee, I sat down and worked out the attached scheme. […]
Friends
One of the benefits of doing yoga is that it opens the door to beautiful friendships, ones that can last for decades. It’s easy to find like-minded people in classes, retreats and workshops, and yoga becomes the matrix that reinforces relationships.
I received a phone call from an old friend last week- we’re talking more than 30 years – who asked if he could come for a visit and an overnight stay.
Trevor Tangye and I did yoga teacher training with Martyn Jackson in the late seventies and early eighties. […]
Defining Moments
I was enjoying listening to the Dixie Chicks this morning on my iPhone while working out with some free weights (yes, I do weights sometimes and yoga). If you haven’t heard of the Dixie Chicks, I’d be very surprised because, as of 2010, they were rated the top selling female group in the U.S.
They also had one heck of a defining moment in their music careers – one of those “S” bends that shows who you are and possibly spins you off in unforeseen directions.
In 2003, on the cusp of U.S. […]
The Yoga Circle
When I left Sydney in November of last year, I had a niggling concern that I was going to lose contact with my yoga community there. So, I instigated this almost-daily cyber writing, sending missives off into the ether, like homing pigeons with little messages attached to them. […]
In Byron
On the cusp of teaching in Byron Yoga Centre’s annual therapy course, I need an early and good night’s sleep tonight.
I think it’s so exciting to have such rich resources available to these therapy trainees in the form of us veteran teachers. I wish I’d had it it my early days of teaching, but I’m probably a late bloomer anyway.
And, yoga teachers never really stop learning. […]
Passion – What's Yours?
A friend who is a Passion Map coach has been in a process with me today of walking me through creating a Passion Map. You can look up the topic on line – http://passionmaps.com – but basically a P M is like any map, a device for discovering where you are, helping chart directions and getting you to where you want to be.
The directions relate to interests that inspire you, even thrill you. For me that would be yoga and yoga teaching, for sure. […]
The Mind
Have you ever done a ten-day Vipassana course? I attended a couple of these meditation courses in the 80’s with some of my yoga friends. The courses are conducted completely in silence.
I didn’t think the sitting/walking meditation would be very challenging for me because, hey, I’m a yogi!
It’s true that I didn’t suffer as much as some people did from the hour-long sitting sessions. What I wasn’t expecting was that when the room was quiet and my body was motionless, my mind went into overdrive. […]
Home At Last
It’s time to get back to a yoga platform here, after my efforts to try and save local beaches the other day and yesterday’s bemoaning of the brazen marketing use of social media.
Let’s talk about Koshas, a word that resembles “kosher” but is as far from Jewish dietary restrictions as Grevilleas are from Geraniums.
Koshas, a Sanskrit word, are often defined as the layers or sheaths, of a person. Another way koshas are described is like a set of Russian dolls – five of them. […]