Well, I woke up early but felt really rested, most of which I attribute to a most excellent acupuncture treatment yesterday with Dr. Craig. So after my morning practices, my tea/milk and so forth, I answered some lengthy emails I have put off and I am now getting to my morning blog post.
Thursday night classes were pretty fun. I think the students in attendance had an okay time, I know I did. Several people have told me that they are bummed the Thursday advanced class is coming to an end and it was a bit bittersweet for me as well. I have taught that class for two years exactly and people who have regularly attended it have advanced in their practice by leaps and bounds which is one of my favorite things about teaching Anusara Yoga. People who do it regularly really get better.
I had a whole rant about this in the Immersion this last weekend. Stephanie asked about how one goes about introducing harder poses into ongoing public classes. I said that what I do is to get an idea of where I wanted to take the group over the course of six months. Then I tell my students my vision. Then I proceed, over the course of the six months to teach all the building blocks and tools to get there. (i.e.- I drag them along with me toward said vision!) Now the great thing about this approach is that people really improve a lot. The challenging thing about it as a teacher is, because people are improving so rapidly, people who skip out for two to six months come back to the same class and realize their level 1 class, somewhere a long the way, became a level 2 class while they were not there.
At some point in the last ten+ years, I made my peace with this phenomena and I decided to stop apologizing that, in terms of asana and yogic practice, I am into progress. I am into facilitating change as a teacher. I am, in no way, interested in learning and teaching creative ways to stay the same. There are a lot of teachers who do not see asana practice in this way. They are not into challenge. They are not into asking a lot of their students. I have had numerous discussion with teachers all over the country from different methods and they have their reasons for teaching how they do. All that is fine also. But me, I want to look at group of students and see that over the course of their studentship with me, there are measurable results happening on the mat.
And this has nothing to do with pushing, a lack of contentment or anything like that. I am not confused about attainment and its limitations and the temporal nature of such things. Not at all. But I love our method because when you practice it, you align with something whose very nature is expanding. You align with Grace and there is no way to stand still when you align with its currents. It is just not the way that it works. Move yourself in accordance to the principles over a long period and they change you.
That is a long way to say people who have come to that class for two years are pretty damn good now and they were great when we started working together. The 6:00 flow class was probably one of my favorite flow classes ever. I started it with strong music, no wasting time and no easing into it and everyone just jumped into the spirit of it with me. It was a blast. Nothing hard or complex just a good sweaty flow with great tunes. Sometimes that is just the thing.
Okay, off to hunt for a house. YIPPEE!
2 comments:
What's with the house hunting? Are you becoming land barons?
"You look at where you're going and where you are and it never makes sense, but then you look back at where you've been and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something."
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