Fun teaching
I've been having so much fun teaching lately! I think it has been a combination of becoming certified and of planning less. As I wrote on my previous entry, I've been as of late experimenting with showing up to class with literally one or two poses planned, and then the rest is improvised. Please note that for 9 years of teaching I have written down whole classes over and over and tried to go by the book. What I've noticed is that I am much more open and available to the students and to the magic of the moment.
I think in some ways the certification process for me was a mixed blessing. In those four years that it took me to get certified, I started to become really hard on myself and to come up with these really "interesting" and "intelligent" classes that I thought my evaluators wanted to see. I got too much in my head and lost some of the joy of teaching. This is no one's fault but my own. With time I learned to trust more my intuition. And in these last two weeks, with the joy of being certified, I have felt a weight lifted, a calm has come over my teaching. But also more joy. All my studying, all the hundreds of workshops, classes, immersions, trainings are in me and it's all inside. The calmer I am, the more that I am available to tap into these teachings that are there inside waiting for me to invoke them.
The irony is that the less I plan what to say, the more I end up speaking and trusting whatever I say, because it is organic and pertinent to the moment. This is all really radical stuff for a control freak like me! So much of this insight has come from therapy. Lately I've been discovering how much in my head I really am. My therapist commented the other day that she noticed that I trust my intellect more than my intuition. "Of course," I answered. She said that it was interesting that as a yoga teacher, I trusted my intellect more. She asked me then at that moment where my breath was in my body and I answered (no kidding) "I think my breath is in my chest." After a pause we both burst out laughing. I am so in my head, that I even think of were my breath is, instead of feeling it!
Oh, I have so much to learn!
How lovely this path of living consciously is!
I can't wait to wake up tomorrow and feel what my class will be!
What a difference from staying awake at night, stressing about creating a brilliant, perfect class. I've put so much pressure on myself...
I used to write out my classes and then panic when I got something out of sequence. I'm so excited to have become the teacher that comes into class and asks, "what do you want to work on today". It is so fun to have so many things thrown at you and then to find a way to incorporate them all together.
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I totally relate. It kind of locked me up into my plan and closed me to the students. And it does feel like I'm stepping into a void!
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of course, i will miss seeing the classes you planned written down here, and sometimes using some of the sequences in my own classes! but, i agree... there is something beautiful and freeing about stepping "into the void" and letting the class unfold as it goes.
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Knowing me Emma, I will continue to go through stages and shift. I am sure that I will keep writing sequences down, maybe even after teaching them, instead of before teaching them. Love the phrase stepping "into the void."
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I've noticed a similar shift in my own teaching over the past year or so (I've been teaching for 7 years). I used to create meticulously crafted sequences and stick to them no matter what. More and more now, I'm walking into my classes with no specific plan in mind. I teach a few warm up poses, some sun salutations and look around to see what the room needs. If nothing jumps out at me, I check in with my intuition and I'm usually right. It's a bit scary, but at the same time it opens up a lot of room for creativity. I've yet to feel 'stuck' wondering what comes next - one pose just seems to lead to another.
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Like you, I found the Anusara certification process joy-killing for months on end, but unlike you, I'm taking responsibility for that debacle onto my own shoulders only to the extent that I took the written test (which was incredibly fun and enlightening) and shot two class videos (which I have no intention of doing ever again).
You were a wonderful yoga teacher, you are a wonderful yoga teacher and you will become an more even wonderful yoga teacher in the future, just like the very people who put you through a four-year ringer of self-doubt (I'd be very sad if they didn't take at least some responsibility for this), and just like everyone who's studied and worked as hard and as long as we have in the Anusara system. You may not have fit the mold that was being asked for, but please never doubt the gifts that you and you alone have to offer to your students.
We all are changing and growing, and a wise teacher's task is to support us in this ongoing process, not to tear us down (that's what cults and the military do to create group cohesion). Maturity, dear friend, includes not caring all that much what other people think, even people we respect.
I hope to never again allow anyone's opinion to destroy my joy in teaching, especially when that opinion is offered in the shockingly disrespectful manner in which it was given to me... They knew I knew everything I was supposed to know, that I was told was a given, but I didn't talk "right," I didn't walk "right," I didn't even breathe "right" -- and I consequently spent many months earnestly working on each of these aspects of my very being. Of course, my teaching improved over the course of three years, and perhaps the petty input I received in my videotape review was in some small way helpful, but the emotional price I paid was FAR too high, and utterly unnecessary.
To his credit, my unpaid "mentor" admitted he had been "unskillful" (his word not mine) in giving feedback and he took responsibility for this, but only *after* I confronted him with it. If he hadn't accepted responsibility in that very moment, I was fully prepared to sever all ties with Anusara. Since I continue to honor John's original genius (and I'm not using that word hyperbolically) in creating the Anusara Alignment Principles, I'm still in the mix. However, the system/kula, as it grows like a trade-marking hydra, continues to be exceedingly problematic for me.
I happily celebrate you on receiving your Anusara certification, but I'm no longer interested in jumping through anyone's hoops. I'm an ERYT-500, which is a fact-based credential in direct accord with the extensive nature of my training and years of teaching. And I believe, so are you!
Talk about "stepping into the void!"
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Laughed when I read this because it is so perfectly true!! It's such a great feeling when we're able to actually be in the moment of teaching & say what is true right then. Trying these days to just practice before teaching when possible, see what arises in me, then feel what's going on in the room. I still plan sequences, but then just use my ideas as a jumping off point for what is true then. It's an incredible ride, hunh?
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