A year on almost and I still can’t decide how I feel about teaching yoga on zoom. I’m guessing I’m not alone in that. You know how it is — some days it feels great and the connection with students feels real and useful, other days it feels full of frustrations and communication fails and I miss the human element so badly.
Today one of my students got in touch to tell me she could no longer come to my regular morning class as she has done through the whole of lockdown. She’s starting a new job and the time no longer works. I’m just happy she has a couple of privates booked with me and she can still make evening class time. And it’s the power of zoom makes all this possible, despite her moving out of town! So a definite win for online teaching 🙂
I feel really fond of this student (I’m sure I’m not meant to, non-attachment and all that). She started yoga in lockdown, she’s come regularly to my classes and developed so much in her practice. I’m full of respect for that. But I’ve never met her in person and I guess now I never will! So I gave her a bit of a send-off, in an online kind of way, within my regular group of students so we could all wish her well. She emailed me back with a photo of her tree pose today, modeling the yoga gear her colleagues had given her as a leaving gift. I was so touched by this. I know the sharing of yoga pose photos is done so unthinkingly by many on social media, but for me it’s a deliberate act that I take care with. I don’t populate my social media feed with beautiful poses in fancy locations. Just enough to satisfy anyone looking that I do actually practise the physical shapes, in case they’re thinking to come to my class 🙂 I’m not quite in the mindset of the camera taking away my yoga soul, but sometimes it doesn’t feel far off that!
So in this weird world of zoom yoga, I’m so grateful to have made this connection, to have helped this student at the beginning of her yoga journey. Now she has some fancy new yoga gear, there’ll be no stopping her! 🙂
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