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Over the years, I’ve tried to sublimate my personality to my teaching. This hasn’t been an easy process as I like to be the centre of attention, and I know that especially in my early years of teaching, I had to overcome being a show-off.
Yoga teachers have a big responsibility to their students. […]
Years ago, a woman who was doing yoga teacher training with me wanted to discuss whether it was right for teach […]
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Tonight I was teaching the students some abdominal work . One area that gets stressed when people do abdominal exercises is the neck and throat. Have you experienced that yourself? I certainly have, and one antidote to release the neck and soften the throat is to keep the backs of the armpits engaged – as in squeezing in. The trapezium releases the shoulders and pressure is alleviated.
The throat is such an important part of one’s body. […]
I’ve been enjoying doing my yoga practice recently a la Vanda Scaravelli. She’s the Italian yoga teacher who created a style based on simple, natural principles of gravity and the breath.
Vanda wrote Awakening the Spine which is not so much an account of her particular form of yoga as a book of poetry and images.
Although Vanda died in 1999, Diane Long carries on with her work and message. I did a 5-day workshop with Diane and I must say I couldn’t figure out from the way she taught what she was on about. […]
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If you are a teacher, you may have had similar experiences to mine when I’ve tried to remember after a class I taught who had been in attendance. When I’ve engaged in conversations with students as they were paying at the end of a class, I’d tend to forget to mark them off the role. […]
I love the students who come to the Yoga Shed for classes. I feel they are open to my teaching them according to their ages and stages of life. It helps that we look out on a beautiful pastoral view and feel spacious in our Being because of it.
There’s no need to compete in the way I teach. […]
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I have been honest so far. Even though, I’m making the effort to present and understand the writing of the old sage, Patanjali, I’m dog paddling here, treading water, trying to stay afloat. […]
A friend and colleague asked me today why I don’t teach pranayama – the yoga breathing – in my yoga classes. I should, I know I should. I was trained in a particular method of yoga that disallowed the practice of breath control until, as Patanjali advises, ‘perfection is attained in asana”. Oh goodness, what a high bar! Nevertheless, when I did yoga teacher training with my first Iyengar teacher, we students would do an hour of pranayama before each asana session. […]
I have such a long way to go in my yoga practice. I’m advanced in age and if I subscribed to the traditional Indian model of ashrama — stages of life, I should have by now evolved into more of a recluse, renunciate, or ascetic. But, no, I’m still a teacher of physical yoga postures. I love this way of practicing for myself, and I enjoy passing it on to students. So, to be honest (Ch. […]
One of the first balancing poses a beginner in yoga is introduced to is vrshkasana (tree pose). Free-standing on one leg is certainly a challenge to a beginner’s sense of balance, and that’s a useful thing to work on. Of course your teacher will say, ‘find a focal point on the floor in front of you, so that focus will help you stay steady in the pose.’ That is concentration and it will help your stability. B.K.S. […]
I wonder if you have read Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. It was one of the books that excited me about yoga when I was just learning about the subject 40 years ago. […]
In the past I was taught by my yoga teachers that the word pratyahara meant ‘withdrawal of the senses’. You might have gotten this message, too, each time your teacher leads you through the yoga relaxation and says something like, ‘Now still the mind and draw your five senses inwards so they don’t distract you.’ That’s a big ask. […]
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Breathing is one of those things that is just there. Or, is it? Do you always remember to breathe when you’re practising yoga?
It seems to amuse my yoga students when I ask them to breathe – not because I’m trying to be funny but because they recognise it’s so easy to suppress breathing ‘when push comes to shove’. In the effort of attaining a challenging pose, relaxed breathing gets jettisoned.
There are many theories of how to breathe for best results when doing asanas or pranayama. […]
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Have you ever done a ten-day Vipassana course? I attended a couple of these meditation retreats, which are conducted completely in silence, in the 1980’s.
I didn’t think that the sitting/walking meditations would be challenging for me because I’d been doing yoga and therefore wouldn’t experience much bodily discomfort.
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 though was that, when the meditation room was quiet and my body was motionless, my mind would go into overdrive. […]
Just a couple of weeks into this season, there’s still time to do your spring cleaning, that is, if you’re so inclined.
I was raised by a very squeaky-clean type of mother. My sister and I did a lot of the grunt work – basically taking our house apart – scouring, scrubbing, and sluicing it down, until there was a sheen and a shine on everything.
If you really knew me, you could see how this sort of upbringing has made spring cleaning anathema to me. I’ve rebelled against it for years until now. […]
Today was the day for the Yoga Aid fundraising event celebrated world-wide to raise money for various worthy causes. I just love these community happenings where everyone is drawn together with the best of intentions and that spirit is palpable. For my part, as one of a team of eight teachers presenting at Yoga Aid in Forster this morning, I was somewhat nervous. […]
I ached to go to the beach today. But I didn’t allow myself. […]
There was a student in last night’s yoga class who stopped right in the middle of the sun salutations and just stood stock still. […]
I have a dear friend who is very sensitive about her ageing process. She is 3.5 years older than me, and looks at least 10 years younger than her chronological age. Here’s to good genes and HRT! The thing that worries my friend most is the fear that she is becoming increasingly forgetful.
I can relate. I don’t know that solving crossword puzzles and other “brain gym” activities or even doing regular yoga practice will hold back the sands of time. […]
I was a volunteer at a HAI residential workshop on the weekend and my role was coordinator of the team who did various tasks to lessen the load on the facilitators; basically we worked to make the whole seminar go smoothly.
I guess you could say that these workshops fall into the category of personal development. The almost always involve the participants having breakthroughs and breakdowns, and sometimes the production team does, too. This makes the smooth running of the event unpredictably rocky. […]