Monday Morning

Well, I sat down hours ago at my computer to write this blog and then I got swept up into emails, dates and future plans and now finally, I am settled into the task of writing.

I had a great weekend in Corpus Christi, TX this weekend. I  taught the first weekend of a year-long Teacher Training program I am directing there. I will teach several weekends, Manorama will be teaching three weekends and  Gioconda Parker, Desirae Pierce and Michelle Acebo will also be teaching a weekend throughout the year. The program is an entry-level Teacher Training program that is aligned with Yoga Alliance standards for registry, not an Anusara Yoga program, so it was a little different than my normal approach to Teacher Training. Instead of teaching students how to teach the Universal PRinciples of Alignment and how to develop heart-based themes and use heart-based language, we worked a lot with the basics of getting people into and out of the poses with clear, action-based commands. We did a lot of pose analysis and exploring pose architecture and not so much with outlining the loops and the spirals.  Obviously,  a lot of it is the same as Anusara Yoga training but Anusara Yoga teacher training is more like graduate school whereas this training is more like a liberal arts education.

I had a really good time with the group. They were very open, sincere  and hard working. One of the things I enjoyed most about this particular group of trainees is that they were beginners to teaching yoga and they were very humble as beginners. They had no ego attachment to being seen as advanced or more knowledgeable or experienced than they actually are. They were eager to learn and to explore the practice from a fresh perspective and learn how to see things as a teacher and  begin the process of articulating the practice and guiding others to their experience.   We worked a lot with basic forms of surya namaksar and the lateral angle poses of the standing pose syllabus.

One thing I feel really good about is that the program I am teaching is geared perfectly for the experience of the group so they felt challenged but not overwhelmed and I was in no way frustrated trying to teaching something they were not ready for. The weekend was smooth and fun and full. It is going to be a great year. I am really excited about this project.

Next on the horizon is the weekend here with Amy. There are still spots open so please sign up and plan on coming. Amy is featured on the cover of Yoga Journal this month and  we are teaming up to offer a commentary on Radical Self-Esteem through the practices and principles of Anusara Yoga. It is a unique opportunity to dive deeper into ourselves and our community with two great guides. I do hope most of you Austinites will support the event.

After Amy leaves, I hit the road for several weeks straight- I have a 6-day Immersion to teach in Tucson with Darren, then a few days of filming with Elena at yogaglo, and then a weekend in Kansas. I come home for a day and then head to Copenhagen for two weeks to teach a workshop and an Immersion.  And then home for a few days followed by a visit to Chattanooga, TN!

And the year continues on like that with fun new cities to visit, new projects to get underway as well as some return visits to familiar places with good friends.

We have group practice again on Wednesday and we are going to be bending in the backward direction. So many of you wrote to me that you did last week's forward bend practice so I thought I could make it a regular plan to post the sequences we work with on wednesday nights here and then folks in distant places could practice on Thursday what we do on Wednesday. That would be a fun thing.

Well, that's about it for now- I do have some things rockin' around in my mind that I am contemplating that I am sure are going to bubble up to the surface here in a few days. So stay tuned!