I remember the first Practice I took at City Yoga, back in the day. Naime was teaching and I went with my friend Randi Jo and we were both freaked out by the advanced poses! I used to go to Naime's practice, then through the years have gone to Noah's, Ross's, Scott's, Tiffany's, Marc's and Tara's. 

About 8 months ago, I asked Peter Barnett, the sweet owner of Black Dog Yoga and wonderful teacher/yogi, if I could teach The Practice at Black Dog and he said yes. I asked him for three reasons:

1) The noble reason: I think every yoga studio has to have at least one Practice class in the schedule.

2) The financial reason: I was hoping it would get more students into my class as it is a bit different from everything else on the schedule and from the other two classes I teach.

3) The selfish reason: As a full time yoga teacher who sometimes teaches 17 classes a week, I no longer have the time to go to too many classes so this would be a chance for me to do yoga!

And because you can only be who you are, not anyone else, my Practice class is not so wild and crazy as the wonderful teachers I just mentioned. I do try to throw in some crazy poses just to jazz things up (today, for instance we did visvamitrasana) but I go with the flow of the students mostly. Also my Practice is only an hour and a half so I can't go too crazy cause I always have to give time to cool down and calm and center the room. There's nothing worse than doing tons of backbends and then a 2 minute savasana. Holy rajasic energy!

The pro of teaching while you practice is that suddenly your teaching becomes so much more organic because you are in the trenches with the students. You are literally doing every single pose with them. I often forget how hard yoga is! So when I am doing parsvakonasana with them into warrior 2 suddenly I'm like, "damn this is hard! Let's come out of this pose you guys!"

It does bring a subtlety to the teaching that I am always awed by. You stop any and every automatic pilot instruction (which ideally we should not have but sometimes, let's be honest, it happens) and you suddenly just say exactly what is needed in the pose because you are in it with them. I notice that my teaching is infinitely more organic and spontaneous. I've gotten really cool sequencing from simply being present in the moment and paying attention, letting the body tell me what should come next.

The con of teaching while you practice is that you really cannot look at every student and often miss what they are doing. Also it's a bit challenging to keep weaving a theme through class as you are moving. Though I have to say I've gotten better at this -here comes a pun- with practice!   I always want to write down my sequence after a Practice class as it is so seamless in a way that a mentally prepared class is not.

This is what I recall from what I did today:

down dog

few warm ups (lunges, uttanasanas, tadasanas, udrhva hastasanas...)

down dog

parsvakonasana prep

parsvakonasana full

half moon

handstand 

forearm balance

parsvakonasana on the floor with a blanket under back foot, hug in the back leg.

warrior 1 on the floor with a blanket under back foot hug in the back leg. Damn.

dolphin pose to dolphin plank back to dolphin 10x

pigeon 1 prep to agnistambasana

parsvakonasana with friend*. The friend stabilizes the yogis' back foot with their foot and with both arms, they help to create inner spiral in the back leg, especially the widening action in the back thigh (*I got this one from John Friend's therapeutics to help clear the psoas in the back leg. It's incredibly powerful, every teacher should have this one on their tool belt. It also is the best partnering spots I know to help someone into our peak pose coming up, visvamitra.)

bound parsvakonasana into bound uttanasana

uttanasana with wrists clasped

bridge pose

urdhva dhanurasana

finally: visvamitrasana- with friend helping widen back leg.

down dog

uttanasana

go to wall: windmill pose

wall hang (upright L pose)

restorative child's pose for 2 min then turn head to other side, 2 min.

supine twist

savasana

Class went well and I thought that the group really jived well with each other.

You know you hit it when someone says: "Class was hard" with a smile on their face (Paulina!)

I had a blast and all my students know how much I sweat and yet I think today the record was broken (Joy agreed!).

I wrote about Restorative yoga on the previous post. I forgot to mention that in the last two classes I've taught, I've had the great fortune to have been assisted by two wonderful beings. Kat and Monica, respectively assisted in the last two classes. They are both doing the Anusara TT with my dear friends Marc, Tara, Tiffany and Noah. Kat has a powerful healing energy. Monica is all love and giving. I can't wait to study with them one day!