Guru Purnima
This Sunday we celebrate Guru Purnima, the festival of the guru. So today and probably all this week, I'll be teaching about the guru. About honoring all those different teachers, family, friends, animals, places in nature, etc. that have been our teachers. Honoring everyone and everything that has helped move us from darkness into light. What a profound concept to pause and honor all of our teachers. We have been given so much. We pause, we remember and then we give it back to others, and the lineage continues...
Tonight at Black Dog's 6PM intermediate class I came in thinking exactly what I was going to teach, the theme, the focus, the poses and which principle of alignment I would concentrate on. And a few minutes before class, three students told me they were having wrist pain. So I paused and realized that I had to throw some things out the window and be of service.
That I indeed had to change gears, to refocus my class and to trust that it would go okay.
That my students are and will always be my greatest teachers and they keep me honest and on my toes.
And it really did! I found myself reminding them of how when we align our wrists, it goes back to the shoulders and to opening the heart. As class progressed I slowly started to get more technical with my language and even did a coupe of demos, showing how to best be in a pose without wrist pain. I found myself having a class where it felt like we were all connected and all learning. I also was challenging them but not fatiguing them.
The beauty of Anusara is that a student can come in with a question or request, and no matter what it will lead you back to the heart.
I've been taking Christina Sell's mentorship program (HIGHLY recommended for Anusara teachers! Thank you again Leslie S.!) and in it she reminds us that tantric philosophy (the framework of Anusara yoga) was a synthesis of all the philosophical schools that preceded it. So tantrics basically wove different philosophies going all the way back to the Vedas, and (to paraphrase Christina's brilliant words) "they harvested the best of what came before and expanded upon it." And just like that, we Anusara yogis can synthesize whatever a student asks, and weave it to the goodness of the heart.
Lastly, here is a quote that Christina has for us in the mentorship program, that I think is quite apropos for the theme this week of the guru:
"The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires."
William Arthur Ward
Oh, one last thing,
I'm still going through the entire Anusara poster.
So my latest Anusara Poster Project Pose: Ubhaya Padangusthasana (What fun pose! I never would have done it had I not been going through the poster!)
Happy Guru Purnima to all my friend...
Reply to this