Teaching Yoga

Six months ago, I decided I wanted to be a yoga teacher. In 12 hours, I’ll be putting those plans into action and teaching my first class. Preparation has been intense. I’ve learned a series of 32 hatha yoga postures, how to guide students through the sequence, and the anatomical benefits of each pose. I’ve learned how to give physical adjustments and modify or advance each pose to help each student get the most out of their yoga practice. I’ve studied how to stand when I teach, how to speak, how to make each student feel that I care about their yoga practice and that I’m there to help them meet their goals.

To think that my competence in these lessons will be put on display tomorrow, well, it makes me start to hyperventilate. I feel confident with the sequence and the script for each pose, but I’m having such a hard time keeping my lefts and rights straight. And I’m consistently going too fast on my timing. And I feel really awkward standing quietly at the front of the room, doing nothing while the 45 seconds of standing bow slowly tick by.

So for tonight, I wanted to take a step back from all these little details to look at the big picture. Because frankly, with my favorite yoga teachers, I’ve never noticed much about their timing or what they do while I’m holding a pose. They just make my yoga class feel good. I leave feeling a hazy sense of peacefulness and contentment. It’s kind of a high. So in typical Psyc major fashion, I start digging for how they do it.

And I realized that part of it is how they manipulate your emotions. I used to take a flow vinyasa class from a girl named Shannon in Minneapolis, and everything about this chick was mellow – from her hippie braided hairstyle to her soundtrack for class. She’d have us in some crazy balance pose with one leg wrapped around our torso, like, four times, but everything about her voice and the way she carried herself conveyed a sense of calmness that was infectious. You'd slow your breathing and ease the tension in your shoulders. And then it happened - there you were, straight chillin’ with your leg wrapped around your torso four times like it was no big deal. Or there’s my teacher from Raleigh, Lisako, who displays a slight smile during boat series. Now, out of everything I’ve ever done in any kind of yoga class ever, boat series definitely wins as the most hated. You sit like this for just shy of three minutes, sometimes lowering and raising your legs, or criss-crossing your arms, or other torturous variations. But when the person in front of you is smiling a bit, you can’t help but smile back. And apparently it’s psychologically impossible to smile and feel gripping pain in your hip flexors, so just like that, you’re cruisin’, humming along to the Where the Wild Things Are soundtrack with the rest of the class.

And they do the opposite for the “cheater” poses – the ones where you’re lying down. One teacher, Carrie, makes her voice a little bit sharper, more authoritative. Most walk around the room as a reminder that class isn’t over yet; we should still be working. They give adjustments to make sure that our practice is continuously growing and we see the benefits of coming to our mats each day.

All of things they do in the most unobtrusive way. See, for me, yoga is a moving meditation. I’m consciously trying to slow myself down from the racing pace of college life. I’m trying to get rid of a lot of the negative, spiteful feelings I’ve collected throughout the day. And that takes a lot of internally oriented focus and energy. I think most teachers know that they need to guide and encourage their students, but the very best are the ones who do it without interrupting that internal focus. Their speech flows evenly and rhythmically. As they walk around the room, their pace is quiet and steady. On a conscious level, they seem to almost disappear. But subconsciously, that’s where they’re doing their work. See, body language and posture register in a different part of our brains, compared to our conscious thoughts and internal monologues. So when Lisako smiles or Shannon relaxes her voice and posture it changes my attitude without me even realizing it. My focus remains targeted towards internal self improvement, undisturbed.

And that’s when yoga feels good. I’ve pushed myself and I feel accomplished, but I never felt myself struggle. I’ve had the chance to fixate on my emotional well being and actively change it. I’m limbered up, sweaty, and a little dehydrated – and if I had to guess, it’s a taste of that whole “enlightenment” thing.

That’s what I want from my class tomorrow – not to nail my script 100%, or finish the class in exactly 1 hour, or get my class perfectly folded into pretzels. I want yoga to feel good – to create that hazy sense of peacefulness and contentment while perched atop their mat.

Namaste.