Saturday was our fourth 6-hour Saturday class for the advanced studies program at PYS. We were sooooo lucky to have an amazing teacher for the whole day. Someone who has had an amazing journey with yoga and meditation. You can see more about Mary here.
The first three hours were spent on meditation and asana. We started with a 15 minute guided seated meditation followed by a long supported supta baddha konasana. Then Mary had us stand in Tadasana while we continued to focus on our breath. We did a very slow sun salutation, mostly with our eyes closed. We were the most careful to watch our breath during the transitions from one pose to another. There were times when I felt disoriented with my eyes closed, especially when I transitioned from uttanasana to a lunge. Like always, I doubted myself in my movements. So there were times that I cheated and opened my eyes to check on my foot and hand placement. Then, we had lots of fun trying to find our lower abdominal muscles. I thought this exploration was wonderful and enjoyed every moment. There were many other poses that we explored, then we ended with another seated meditation.
After our dinner break, we came back to class and talked about Mary's favorite topic: joints, especially the hip joint and its happiness in our body while practicing poses such as trikonasana. She gave us permission to explore how we placed our feet and hips in our practice. She told us to break the rules... a refreshing instruction from a yoga teacher.
At the very end of the class, we talked about teaching and did a 5 minute practice with a partner where we talked someone through a pose. This wasn't so bad for me since I teach every Thursday. The pressure is different since the person I was talking to was an experienced practitioner and I wasn't sure what to say to help her in a pose that she had already worked hundreds of times. So this prompted me to ask Mary about her inspiration for teaching. I asked her, "When you teach your classes, do you focus more on what your students need or are your instructions coming from what you are learning in your practice?"
At first she told me that this was an excellent question and that I should ask every teacher the same question. Then she went further in her explanation saying that we teach for ourselves and we practice for our students. But she also went deeper to say, we teach for ourselves and we practice for the universe. If we bring our sincere intentions to our practice, then the fruits of our practice will transpire in our teaching and our students will feel the benefits. This explains how sometimes it feels like all of the yoga teachers I study from seem to have weekly meetings to game plan their teaching for the week. But it's really something greater than them... our connection to each other... is this purusa? I will have to think more on this, a great topic for another post.
More inspiration to get that consistent home practice going!
On a very positive note, I completed my first pranayama exercise this morning and wrote a journal entry, just as the pranayama book instructed. Yeah!
No comments:
Post a Comment