Noah and Christina
Today was the first day of a three-day workshop entitled "For the Love of Yoga" that Noah Maze and Christina Sell are doing in Los Angeles. The room at Yoga Glo was packed when I got there; and then unfortunately, I had to leave half-way because I'm teaching a Teacher Training at Black Dog Yoga. But there was no way in hell that I was going to miss this workshop! My first ever with Christina and of course Noah who is slowly but surely becoming one of my all time favorite teachers.
Today's session was a "Teacher's Session" and it started (after a beautiful opening) with Noah and Christina asking us about how they could helps us as teachers.
Some of what came up was:
*how to smoothly integrate theme with the UPA's and sequencing
*choosing a peak pose and sequencing in a methodical way
*how to do fewer poses to get to the same point (efficacy, economy)
*having a pinnacle pose with modifications; being able to maintain momentum
Then they asked how we came up with our themes.
Some things people said include:
*having a theme of the week
*inspired by the seasons
*intuition, based on mood
*having an apex pose
*flying by the seat of our pants!
Mind you, I'm listing all this down and it might seem maybe not so exciting, but it was; it was incredibly so. Christina is fiery and passionate and articulate as all hell. Noah is confident, funny and powerful. It was actually an incredibly lively and inspiring conversation. Noah and Christina make a formidable team.
Then they named the three components of an Anusara class:
Heart-based theme
the UPA's
Asana!
or another way to look at it:
Heart
Mind
Body
And these three points dovetail nicely into the three kinds of students, which Christina described to us, as we were all laughing out loud. Respectively the three kinds of students are the "mystics", the "engineers", and lastly the "athletes".
The idea being that "mystics" are those students who are happy with lit candles, poetry and anything that gets them to their heart.
"Engineers" are those that are really interested in the precise torque of the pelvis in inner spiral and how far does the front knee bend in trikonasana, and am I doing the pose right?!
And lastly the "athletes" are those that don't really care about the theme, don't really care about the demo, they just want to move and get into their bodies and sweat.
We all have all three in us and yet, we all have one that lives quite strongly inside us. The three kinds of students reminded me so much of the three doshas also. I'm so Kapha/mystic 
Then they asked us to ask ourselves as teachers:
*What am I trying to accomplish? What do I have to offer today? How can I be authentic?
*In what poses, in what ways might this come readily?
*What level of class am I teaching?
*What are common misalignments of the pose?
Then they moved into specifics like, say, you're teaching about Muscular Energy... So how can you really teach it in a class? Using the three currents of Muscular Energy (we named them) how can you use three poses to demonstrate, say one of the currents of ME going from easy to harder pose?
One of the examples given was using the first current of ME which is "hug skin to muscle, muscle to bone."
And the poses (from easier to harder) that were given were:
Tadasana
Utkatasana
and Vira 1 with the back heel lifted (the pose formerly known as Crescent pose).
Unfortunately at this time I had to run out- we were in Santa Monica and I had to get to Sherman Oaks. If you are not familiar with driving in LA and driving during rush hour on a Friday, let's just say its CRAZY. So I left to go to Black Dog, to co-teach my first night of the Level 1 Teacher Training. What an honor that I was asked again to take part in this.
We have a lovely group of people- I can tell and I look forward to getting to know them and to teaching them by myself tomorrow morning. I look forward also to attending three more workshops with Noah and Christina this weekend.
It's going to be a very full weekend!
Namaste!
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