~ Gravity : Power : Yoga ~

Posts Tagged ‘teaching’

I ask because I now know for sure, I like teaching power!  It’s that simple, while I love my friends who I have taught beginner flow to, I have to say the challenge of building a sequence that both challenges the power yogi (or yogini) and encompasses all the core strength and stretches is WAY more fun!

So I want to give a special thanks to my newest friend, SG, for giving me the challenge, and bringing the talent to make it fun!  What could be more fun than finding a way to sneak in half a dozen inversions, arm balances, and core work!

But just as important, the lesson I learned about myself.  As part of my training I am required to teach, but teaching beginning yoga to people that have never practiced yoga is a challenge that I just don’t enjoy.  Sure, I can do it, but it seems to require far more effort, and provide far less pleasure than throwing together a power challenge for an advanced practitioner.

Thank you to all of the great power teachers that I learned from, what I teach my students today is simply mocking the great lessons I have learned from you over the years!

~ Namaste

As a man with a fair amount of upper body strength I’ve never really had a problem with handstands, but as I get closer to teaching I’ve been looking for ways to help beginners get to the point of inversion bliss. Yoga Journal has a great video post this month on “handstand prep“, this is how I’ve always seen it taught to beginners, and it’s well worth the watch if your trying to get inverted.

A few weeks back I was in Santa Monica visiting friends, I had the fantastic opportunity to go practice with my “mexico crew” and see the new studio where some of my favorite teachers are teaching Home Simply Yoga.  I had been thinking about a second mat to keep in the home Yoga studio and had been seriously considering one of the eco friendlyManduka Eko mats.  

I was quite happy to see that the studio had this new eco friendly mat to practice on and evaluate.   I was NOT however happy with the outcome.  During my practice I couldn’t get the smell and taste of rubber out of my mouth, eyes, and nose.  To the point that the corner of my eyes felt like they were burning due to the rubber allergy.

So for my money, I would not buy anything but the original Maduka black mat!!  There is no substitute, and it’s eco friendly because you will never need another mat!

Two down, seven to go!  I can’t say enough nice things about the Asheville Yoga Center teacher training program and Shala.  There is such a nice mix of class, hands on teaching, practical learning, and history of Yoga.  Each weekend when I prepare for class I think about how long the weekend is going to be, 20 hours over 2 1/2 days is a lot of time to spend in a class.  But as I sit here on Monday morning, I’m wondering where the weekend went.

Having learned the basics about the history of Yoga, the first few of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra’s, and watching some of the history and overview as presented David and Sharron, I would say it was a well rounded full weekend.

What a blast!

I’m the first person to make the argument that Yoga is as good physically as any workout regimen, with the added kicker of building mind<->body awareness.  But I’m finding that in the Yoga community there is a great deal of animosity for the “Western workout culture” and finding that a good bit of Yogi’s do not see any reason to bring Yoga to the masses.

If by teaching Yoga you are helping your students understand the true benefits of the practice, wouldn’t it make more sense to be able to have a larger audience, and therefore have the potential of positively effecting more lives?  I can quite honestly say that I did not get into Yoga for anything other than the pure benefits of the physical practice.  As an alternative to traditional physical therapy, I chose Yoga to keep my back and neck in proper working order.  It wasn’t until I’d been practicing for a while that I understood what it was all about and started working on my internal transformation.  If the goal of a Yogi is a life of nonviolence, peace, and understanding, why are we trying to keep this from getting out?  What are we afraid of?

Will Yoga ever be “mainstream” without commercialization, and will commercialization be the end of Yoga as we know it?

Last weekend we spent almost the entire weekend with Kishan Shah, doing Yoga, learing about Ayurvedic medicine and the Ayurvedic way of life.  What a great way to spend a weekend.  I want to thank Kishan for sharing is time, and his teaching with us.  It is a great treat to be able to practice with a teacher that embodies so much of the Yogic spirit.  For those of you who are lucky enough to live in a city where Kishan teaches, take the time to visit a class, you won’t be disappointed.

As I look forward to my first teacher training class next weekend, I am excited, and hopeful that I will one day be in the position to change and influence lives in such a positive way.

Thank You Kishan!

I wanted to setup a page dedicated to the people that showed me the light and led the way.

In the beginning there was Cherly Deer, my first teacher, who will always have a special place in my heart.  Thank you Cheryl for starting my journey! If you would like to take classes with Cheryl, she is currently living & teaching in Denver CO and can at least be found here.

Then, there were the Cahill’s, Krista & Brock, who taught me how to fly, and inspired me to be a “floater”!  Without you two I’d still be mushing along just making it thru various flow classes.  You can find Krista & Brock at their respective web sites, or teaching at the Home Simply Yoga studio in Santa Monica CA.