my yoga journey
On Friday I went to a family funeral. Difficult occasions always. And always such difficulty is compounded by various day to day circumstances. The inconsequentialities of recent snowy conditions disrupting travel plans, minor illnesses creating anxiety, and also the deeper current of entrenched family dynamics... Such are our human lives, even in the face of... Continue Reading →
I sit with the teacher a little before class. She talks about the weather and birdwatching, we talk about mundane weekend plans and what we're having for lunch. We also talk about the non-sense of 200 hour YTT programmes, how little they equip anyone for the reality of teaching. We consider the difficulty of assessing... Continue Reading →
I ran a workshop for my students recently to help them begin to establish their own home yoga practice. When helping them think about categorising the poses they knew so that they could define a simple sequence, I asked them to consider what their favourite pose was. Perhaps they could use that as the lynch-pin... Continue Reading →
I'm learning the optative in Sanskrit. My textbook tells me "the optative is a verb form that indicates possibility. It can be translated as 'should', 'would', 'could', 'ought' or 'may'. I found sentence 3 in the first exercise ironically amusing: "The teacher ought to be content". After all, the last time I had met with... Continue Reading →
I'm not one for crying at weddings. But I almost cried at this one. The wedding of an old work colleague, more recently friend, most recently a yoga student. She is, in fact, one of my oldest students, allowing me to practise teach her immediately post TT graduation, until the arrangement solidified into something more... Continue Reading →
My class laughed when I said I was going to miss them while I'm away for a few weeks. They often laugh incredulously at the things I say. They don't believe that I will actually miss them, just as they don't believe that teaching times are my favourite times of the working week, that I... Continue Reading →
Had we but world enough and time ..... But at my back I always hear Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near; (Andrew Marvell) One of my teachers asked me last week how my own teaching was going. "Really well" burst from my lips before my usual reticence caught up to the conversation. "As far as I... Continue Reading →
I'm feeling a certain softness and tenderness towards myself these days. It's growing a little within me. My teachers are inspiring some honest self-care. Not the self-soothing warm baths and small indulgences type of nurturing that seems commonly advocated in popular media but which I suspect has little to do with yoga. Theirs is a... Continue Reading →
So guru purnima is coming up and this is always a time of year when I take a little more time around and through my practice to reflect on my teachers, what they offer me, how I respond to that and how I might carry forward their teachings within my practice -- or not (yet).... Continue Reading →
