wingin it

I love studying yoga and I love teaching yoga. I get pretty enthusiastic when I teach. I journal about a heartfelt emotion I want the class to experience, introduce a big-ish idea and make it more understandable by relating it to something smaller, and then decide on a alignment principle that integrates everything together. I also plan a sequence to go along with the alignment principle that is emphasized and includes a peak pose… I have a notebook that I record these journals, vocabulary I want to use, sequences… Yes I plan but part of my plan is that I plan on ditching the plan. And although the class does goes a little different then I had originally outlined the class still tends to go in that direction.

I also get a little stressed about planning everything out. I talked to a yoga teacher friend of mine, Sammy, he was talking about how I should try to be just completely spontaneous. Just the thought of that made my skin crawl, what happens if I went blank? Then I reminded myself that I have been teaching for over five years and have a deep passion for yoga…. A week pasted and I dint think much about it until the night before a morning class I teach came. I was so tired. I didn’t want to stay up and plan a class and a theme so I decided I would just wing it. That morning it was so hard to not get my pen and paper and start brain storming ideas but I resisted..

I taught the class and it was so great. There were a few new to Anusara students in the room. I asked what people wanted to work on, a few people mentioned shoulders. So we did lots of fun shoulder loop work. The poses flowed so smoothly, my alignment ques were very clear I felt very comfortable, and most importantly I had fun yet remained calm. I think it was one of the best classes I taught. I always get nervous before teaching a class but now I am starting to think that maybe me planning stuff out so much is what causes the nervous, will I remember my plan? I want to continue to trust myself as a teacher.

I talked about sthira sukham asanam saying that that not only the way we hold our pose but the way we live our life should have the dynamic balance between stability and delight or vibrancy and ease.