My first yoga class

I taught my first yoga class ever last Saturday morning. I wasn’t sure if it was right for me to do it and was quite nervous before starting. I felt a great sense of responsibility for being the person who’ll provide a bunch of people with their first contact with yoga. Let me say that I might not be the bestest teacher in the world, but I tried to do my best with what I’ve learnt and all in all, I think I didn’t do that bad. I walked them through the basic principles of breathing and good posture and then did some simple standing and seated postures. I also included a couple of easy backbends, but no twists or inverted postures, which I’ll save for the following classes. The class was 90 minutes long, which provided for a long Savasana, something they enjoyed.

It’s All Over

The course finished last Saturday. I still can’t believe I’ve been so lucky to have the chance to study with such brilliant, honest teachers. They are honourable yet down-to-earth at the same time. “They’re so gracious”, one of my fellow students said on the final day. And they really are.

It’s unbelievable how in such a short period of time one can make bonds with people. The departure was incredibly moving and I’m going to miss them all. They’re amazing.

It’s a shame all good things come to an end.

Almost Finished

Only one week left to finish the course. Not only have I learnt lots of new things and got a reminder on many other things that I already knew. During these three weeks, I’ve discovered that all the yoga reading that I’ve done hasn’t been in vain. Most of what has been covered so far wasn’t really new to me. Nevertheless, it’s been great to listen to such a clear, precise and coherent exposition of the principles of yoga. It’s going to be a long year until Module 2 of the course starts (we’ll be covering Yoga Therapy for structural problems).

The course has been lots of fun, too. People are so friendly and kind, and it’s been really interesting to hear about their different experiences and opinions. Some of them are self-confessed bookworms (just like me) and I already have a long list of recommendations that I’ll be checking out when I’m settled back home. I took three of the British girls on a trip around the island and we had a great time that day. It’s a shame we live so far away, because they are really amazing people.

Some strange things have happened during these past two weeks as well. And when I say strange, I mean unsettling. Last week, I had an accident in the motorway on my way to the hotel where the course is taking place. Not a good way to start the day and the week. No one got hurt and there was very little car damage but it was a shock anyway. To make it even “funnier”, last Tuesday I got a flat tyre in the motorway as well. I don’t know how I managed to get to the shoulder of the road from the furthermost lane. Everything got solved in less than an hour, but it was disturbing. However, I don’t think about these incidents as bad luck. On the contrary, I feel lucky that nothing bad actually happened!

So Far, So Good

The course started last Monday, although we had an initial meeting the previous day. We’re a group of 20 like-minded people from all over the world (mostly British, but there’s an American and we’re five Spaniards) and we all get on very well.

We start our day at 7:30 with an hour of practice. This week, they’ve been having private appointments with all the students in order to design a personal sequence according to their goals and physical concerns if any. Until we got that appointment, we were allowed to do our own thing, and as soon as you were given your routine, you then started doing that instead.

After breakfast (which is buffet-style and fantastic – it’s a five-star hotel, after all), we attend a lecture on theory by Mohanji and then, after a 15-minute break, we learn asana. Some of the asanas are done in a different way to what we’re used to (Utthita Trikonasana is done with your feet parallel, and the classical version involves a twist, not a lateral bend) and the overall principles applied are somewhat different, the emphasis being on breathing and spine work. This is new for all of us, but we all agree that this way of practising asana makes you more concious of what you’re doing and is both safer and more effective. He says we shouldn’t have blind faith, but understand these principles and then try them, so when we make such affirmations, it’s because we’ve experienced them ourselves.

Lunch sucks. It’s getting better, but when a Spanish chef tries to follow instructions from Indian masters that pay lots of attention to the suitability of meals according to Ayurveda, that’s what you get. Undercooked chickpeas, bland soups and overcooked veggies. But, as I said, it’s getting better.

We finish at 5 in the afternoon, which gives us time to digest all the information we collect from the lectures and the asana instruction. Besides, I’ve had the chance to come back home a couple of days instead of being the whole month away from Elvis and The Girlfriend.

The more classes I take, the more I’m convinced that the Mohans aren’t masters only because they’re knowledgeable about yoga, but because they’ve got an amazing talent to bring light over some subjects that seem obscure and complex. Mohanji has this special ability to make the metaphysics of yoga look rational, logical and full of common sense. I agree with him that yoga, in essence, is like that, but nowadays there are so many styles and schools that people are getting confused about the main subjects. Especially in the West, people need to go back to the basics and forget about fancy things that have nothing to do with the real path and goal of yoga. I feel very lucky that both my first yoga class and my first teacher training has been with them.

Reading, Part 2

Now I’ve finished both books by the Mohans and the one on the ethics of teaching yoga by Donna Farhi (I really don’t have time to look for the links so just look for them in my recent posts). I’m currently reading the second chapter of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (translation and commentary by George Feuerstein). I hope I can manage to finish reading the rest of it before the course starts (Sunday next week), as I know they regard it as the definitive text on yoga.

I can’t belive I’ll be starting the course in just over a week. Still haven’t received any detailed instructions or information on the schedule. I’ll send an email later just to check everything is going as expected.

Not much else going on in my life these days. My life is really boring sometimes.

Reading, reading and…

… more reading.

I finished the first book by the Mohans the other day and now I’m halfway through their second one. They’re so comprehensive, I still can’t understand why they are so underrated. Desikachar’s “The Heart of Yoga” still remains my favourite introductory book on yoga (or my favourite book on yoga, for that matter) but these two are close runners-up.

I have to say some of the ideas shown on the Ayurveda section of “Yoga Therapy” are new to me in that they’re slightly different to the approach taken by some important authors on the subject (Vasand Lad, Robert Svoboda). For example, the Mohans describe Vata Dosha as being formed by air and Pitta Dosha exclusively by fire. All the other sources seem to agree that Vata has space as well as air, and Pitta is a combination of fire and water. I don’t think this makes a big difference in diagnosis or treatment, but it’d be certainly interesting to know the reason behind that apparent simplification.

I’ve also finished reading the first part of “Instructing Hatha Yoga” and I’ve stopped right before the section on asanas. I’ll resume reading once I’ve finished the teacher training but I wanted to cover the introductory sections so I can then go straight to the meat of the book. I didn’t learn anything new, but it served as a nice refreshment on some basic concepts like the mechanics of breathing and the three different styles of learning (visual, auditory and kinesthetic), which I already heard about in the Pilates teacher training. It’s great to have all this information together in one single book and I think it should be listed in the recommended bibliography of all yoga teacher trainings.

I practised yoga on Monday. These days, I’m mostly doing a modified version of Primary Series, skipping some poses and adding some others so, I guess you can’t call me an ashtangi anymore. I still feel I am an ashtangi, though – I just have to add some variations or else I’ll get bored (that, and it’s a bit too late to change the name of the blog, anyway). I planned to practise again on Wednesday or Thursday but that didn’t happen because, despite still being officially on vacation until tomorrow, The Boss asked me to substitute her and I just couldn’t say no. I’ll try later today.

On a different note, I realised the other day that I probably won’t have access to internet during the training. Not that I can’t live without it, but it’d be sad to miss the chance to keep a record of the experience in my blog. I could write something every day, save the entries as drafts and then publish them all once the course has finished, but it sounds somewhat excessive. A weekly summary sounds more sensible but that can only happen if I the schedule allows me for some free time to come back home (I won’t be losing sleeping hours for the sake of a post).

Come to think of it, the course starts in two weeks and I still haven’t received
any information regarding the schedule we’ll follow, equipment needed
(if any), etc. I’m so eager to get started!

Overwhelmed

I got the books yesterday and I’ve been browsing through and taking a quick glance at them (in Spanish: “hojeándolos y ojeándolos“, two homophones. That’s it for today’s lesson). All of them have instantly become favourites, despite that I haven’t read any of them from cover to cover. They are loaded with lots of useful information and I really recommend them to anyone planning to do a teacher training or just deepening their personal practice.

The ones by the Mohans are excellent textbooks which serve as nice introductions to yoga and its therapeutic applications. The more I read about them and the more I get to know about their work, I can’t help but think that they are being greatly overlooked. The books are packed with graphics and charts and lots of valuable tips and information.

The ones on instructing, assisting and adjusting will undoubtedly prove to be exceptionally useful once I start teaching because there’s lots of practical information in both of them. I like how the information for each pose is presented in “Instructing Hatha Yoga“, especially the kinetic aspects. Despite not being as thorough, “Yoga Posture Adujstments and Assisting” is an excellent complement to the former because its graphics are somewhat clearer, making it easier to understand where to “push and pull” at a glance.

Yoga Journal’s “Yoga as Medicine“, by Dr. McCall, looks promising. First of all, it’s huge yet unbelievably cheap (600 pages for less than 15 bucks!). Secondly, it covers an aspect of Yoga that I find extremely interesting and in a rigorous way. Instead of using an authroritative tone, the author simply explains that Yoga can many times help when Western medicine fails.

Finally, Donna Farhi’s book on the Ethics of teaching yoga is my least favourite. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great one and it’ll be nice to own it in case I find myself in a delicate situation. It’s just that most of what she shares is commonsense and I don’t think I’ll have to face all those problems, either.

Now, I don’t know where to start!

Chillin’

I’ve been spending these past few days in the apartment I mentioned in my last post. I’ve been studying, reading a lot about yoga and just relaxing and disconnecting from the world. I came back home today because I’ve got some errands to run tomorrow in the morning but after that I’l go back there at least until Thursday (The Girlfriend’s birthday).

I practised yoga there on Wednesday. I did Pilates on Thursday and Sunday. I would have practised yoga again today but:

- It’s New Moon
- I had a birthday party (had lots of fun)

On a different note, I finally ordered some of the books I had on my wishlist:

- Yoga Journal’s “Yoga as Medicine“
- “Yoga Posture Adjustments and Assisting” by Stephanie Pappas
- “Teaching Yoga: Exploring the Teacher-Student Relationship” by Donna Farhi
- “Instructing Hatha Yoga” by Kathy Lee Kappmeier

The first one is pretty new and the reviews sound good. I’m interested in the therapeutic use of yoga and that one looks like a reliable source of information. The other 3 books are all aimed at yoga teachers and, being a newbie, I’m sure they’ll come handy.

I also ordered the two books by A.G. Mohan:

-”Yoga Therapy“
-”Yoga for Body, Breath, and Mind“

They’ll be selling both of them here, during the teacher training but I just couldn’t wait until then. After all, the Mohans are going to be my teachers and I’d like to have some background. Can’t you tell I’m eager for the course to start?

BE

B is for busy, E is for exhausted

In my previous post, I wrote that I’d be having a busy day on Thursday and that I didn’t know if I’d be able to practise. Well, the day ended up being even more hectic than I had first thought. I woke up early and, after walking the dog, I had my hair cut. Then I went out and washed the car. Back home, I sat on my desk to study Anatomy for a couple of hours. After lunch, I took the car to its first MOT test and afterwards came back home again, earlier than I had expected. It was then when I squeezed a 1-hour long practice. I did a slightly modified version of Primary Series (because I was short on time) and then ran to the Spa I work in to teach 2 Pilates classes in a row. As I’ve said, I’m on vacation but my boss asked me to sub her before I left last Tuesday (although it was meant to be only for an hour). I’m good like that.

After all this rush and activity, I slept like a baby and didn’t for a moment consider practising yesterday. I was sore and preferred not to overdo it. I studied some more Anatomy and read a few more chapters of “The Heart of Yoga” by Desikachar.

On the subject of books, I’d like to share my current Amazon wishlist with you. I plan to place an order this month and I’d love it if any of you out there shared your opinion, in case you own or have read any of the following:

- “The Complete Book of Vinyasa Yoga” by Srivatsa Ramaswami
- Yoga Journal’s “Yoga as Medicine“
- “Yoga Posture Adjustments and Assisting” by Stephanie Pappas
- “Teaching Yoga: Exploring the Teacher-Student Relationship” by Donna Farhi
- “Instructing Hatha Yoga” by Kathy Lee Kappmeier

Lots Of Yoga Reading

Today, I’ve spent most of the day reading. I went through a few chapters of Desikachar’s “The Heart Of Yoga” and Tara Fraser’s “Total Yoga” as well. I’ve had them both for a couple of years and have read them from cover to cover but I want to use this time on vacation to get a clear picture of the basics of yoga in preparation for the course. The Mohans studied directly with Krisnamacharya, Desikachar’s father, so their ideas have a common root. “The Heart Of Yoga” is one of my favourite yoga books and I think he does an excellent job in thoroughly explaning the most important aspects of yogic philosophy. Besides, the book is completed with Patanjali’s “Yoga Sutra” with Desikachar’s commentary.

No practice today. I intended to practise right after helping The Girlfriend do some Pilates but I wasn’t really in the mood and it had got a bit too late. I’m having a busy day tomorrow but I’ll still try to squeeze an hour of yoga before lunch. Not necessarily Ashtanga, by the way, as I’m trying to make my yoga practice more varied. I’ll design a short vinyasa-style asana sequence favouring standing postures and twists, things I’m not getting much of with Pilates. We’ll see how that goes.