Yoga Report

When I plan the course I put all lectures  in one document.  Since I am going to change a lot at this stage I keep the description of each asana as short as possible. I write down the name of the asana, the number of rounds and how long time we will spend in this asana.   Looks something like this:

Yoga Class #1

….

Yoga Class #7

…

• Bhujangasana/Cobra Pose – 3 rounds – 4 minutes
• Shalabhasana/Locust Pose – 3 rounds – 4 minutes

…

I start by planning the first lecture and the last and then filling in the rest .

then when I have done the layout for all the lectures I copy and paste the class structure fot the lecture I am about to teach.  I go in and fill out exactly what instructions I should give. That looks something like this:

Yoga Class #7

…

• bhujangasana/Cobra Pose – 3 rounds – 4 minutes. Lie prone on the floor. Stretch your legs back, tops of the feet on the floor. Spread your hands on the floor under your shoulders. Hug the elbows back into your body ….
• Shalabhasana/Locust Pose – 3 rounds – 4 minutes. Lie on your belly with your arms along the sides of your torso, palms up, forehead resting on the floor. Turn your big toes toward each other to inwardly rotate your thighs, and firm your buttocks so your coccyx presses toward your pubis …

…

The last step is needed if you teach in a foreign language or if you are new to teaching .

What to include in each class ?

for more advanced students I try to get back bends, forward bends, side bends and some twisting into each lecture. As a general rule for beginners I start of slowly and gradually increase the tempo in the beginning of the lecture and then I slowly decrease the tempo at the end of the lecture. In the end I do some postures which you hold for a longer time and I end with Pranayama for the beginners.

Have I reached my goal with this blog now ? I work as a paid yoga teacher now and that was my dream a year ago.  My perspective on yoga have changed and reality hit me pretty hard several times. This year has been a lot of travelling and a lot of new faces.  It was a gradual progress towards teaching a class for one and a half hour on my own. Basically I pass on knowledge from other people and to take credits for this knowledge would be ridiculous. Even if I am nervous when meeting new people I would say it is easy to meet people but it is much harder to say goodbye. During the teaching training courses there was a schedule from morning until evening. Now when I am back in Copenhagen I am responsible for this and there are many things a yoga teacher training does not prepare you for. When you teach in a gym there is usually a fixed timeslot which you have to adjust to. Usually the classes in a real situation are more mixed compared to the training situation on the courses. Some people have problems with their back, some people are overweight and there can be a big difference in age among the students. You have to cater for all these people.  As a yoga teacher you put yourself on the line and when a student is disappointed or expect something different it is easy to feel hurt and start blaming yourself. Did I say it wrong and could I have done it differently? the old proverb comes to mind “you can please some of the people, some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people, all of the time.”  When I taught individually to people I got immediate feedback by looking at the student and I could adjust the class totally to this person. With a group the feedback is in a different way and you have to make a class which works for the majority of the group and some people will feel left out because the exercise is to demanding or to easy. I have to add that I try to have less demanding alternatives for all poses. As a teacher you can spend some time on grooming  and keeping yourself  in shape but the focus is to teach the student how to rest in himself/herself. This is an acceptance of yourself as you are right now. In this way I want the yoga room to be place where you can rest from demands that are put on us in different situations. In the yoga room you do not have to be attractive, sexy, manly or feminine it is enough to be yourself.

Yoga class was great. Great students who really made my day. Spontaneous laughter and good atmosphere. It is funny how the tension from yesterday melted away today. I taught yoga in a way that really felt natural for me. I put in a joke here and there and I went around giving personal instruction when somebody had difficulties. I put in a lot of rest in between the poses and I tried to make it into a soft experience. The class was almost exactly 1,5 hours.

I cling to many things. I like certain food because this is what I used to eat when I visited my grandmother and grandfather. I associate the small town where I grew up with safety. I walked on the beach today and I thought ” why is it that I feel alone  ?”. My longing to be somewhere else is really strong right now.  I do not think that a certain place would cure my loneliness and I do not think a person could cure it. I guess I am looking for something that does not exist.  Accepting the reality as it is right now is hard for me and the restlessness is getting to me again and again. I open my mailbox and I get disappointed. I open Facebook and I get frustrated.

The group consisted of mostly elderly people and I got some feedback now from one of the staff in the gym. They found the sitting with straight backs to long and some of them experienced pain in their backs from this.  I will address this by putting in more dynamic postures and more rest in Shavasana in between the postures.