To be a teacher...

All posts tagged yoga teacher training

Posted:
08/21/2012
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To be a teacher…

A Teacher is a Student:

“ To teach is to demonstrate”-A Course in Miracles.

We are all teachers whether we realize it or not.  As children we are constantly looking to the people around us to see how to be in this world.  We never really lose this skill, we just make it less obvious. The biggest mistake that we all make is convincing ourselves that we have it all figured out and that we don’t need to keep learning. Don’t mistake practicing for getting it right. Life is a practice. This experience of life is ever changing and to be most skillful is to allow ourselves to always be students. Who are we learning from? Who are our teachers? Who do we surround ourselves with and how are they living their lives?

A Teacher is Disciplined:

One of the most amazing aspects of teaching is experiencing students shift into more skillful ways of being. In order to do this authentically though, the teacher must be committed to their self-work. I cannot take someone where I have not been. Teaching holds me accountable to maintain a consistent practice of developing skill and balance of body, mind, and emotions.

A Teacher is Humble:

“The teacher pulls the divine through her students.”- Rolf Gates

A teacher is one who knows that within every person lies their own Guru. The true work is to help students find that clear space inside of them, so that the student can become there own teacher. The teacher is simply  a sign post pointing the way. She is like a finger pointing to the moon. If you focus to long on the finger then you miss all the heavenly beauty. We must do the work to create a strong relationship with our intuition, our inner teacher… that space inside of us that always knows.

“Yoga is the practice of moving into stillness to experience the truth of who we are.  It is listening inwardly for guidance , not just some of the time but all the time. And then being trusting enough and daring enough to do as we are prompted to do.” -Erich Schiffman

 

-John Yax

Posted:
07/05/2012
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My First Person Experience – Jennie Culp

We at Hot House Yoga and Yax Yoga Concepts are moved always by the feedback we receive. It’s important for us to share these inspirational stories, not for us, but for you — people who may be hesitant to try hot yoga or a teacher training. We want you to have all the information possible about what we do and why we do it. My First Person Experience is a portion of our blog that is dedicated to sharing these stories. If you have a story to share about your personal journey please email courtney@hothouseyogi.com.

First Weekend:

Hot House Yoga has been one of the best experiences of my life. Just two years ago, my wonderful boyfriend Joe brought me into the studio. I never knew that today I would be working at such a wonderful place, and participating in a yoga teacher training with them. My journey with yoga has been a tough love/hate relationship. I’ll admit it, it definitely hasn’t always been easy. It’s not because I can’t physically do the poses, or be in the hot room, but quite honestly, it’s because I didn’t want to face myself, and I didn’t want to face my past. I’m still shaking the diva-like mentality that the whole world doesn’t revolve around me, and that I am not perfect. All my own experiences lead me to want to share the passion that has been instilled in me, and truly share the gift of yoga. I have a “Desire to Inspire”.

The first weekend of teacher training I was left walking around in a haze, questioning myself and wondering who I was. The first weekend, there were 2 monumental things that happened to me. The first was that they asked us to sit quietly for 10 minutes, and not in a chair. I had never tried to sit quietly with myself before, and I’m not going to lie, I began to feel very anxious. The word ‘meditation’ has so much to it. It makes me think of peaceful people who seem to have it all together. Am I supposed to be like those people? I felt myself slipping into thought, and before I knew it the 10 minutes was up. I felt so discombobulated. The only way I know to describe it, is it’s as if it there was someone holding a giant mirror and making me sit there and watch all my thoughts, unable to see any distraction, just focusing on me and my thoughts. I couldn’t believe how much I was thinking! That was when I knew that this was so much more than just learning to become a yoga instructor, I was going to be learning about myself. I always keep saying that I am trying to “find” myself, maybe that’s why it was so difficult to write about who I was, what I want.

And then I began to think even more.

We began to clinic through the poses, one by one. What I thought to be basic became quite the opposite. One of the biggest transformations that happened to me the first weekend was that I realized I had feet.

That may sound so silly to some people, but seriously, how often do you pay attention to your feet? I didn’t, and in every single class that has followed the first weekend of training, I have become so much more aware of my feet. We ended the first weekend after reading through the first and second parts of our scripts. I felt so empowered, just reading the words that I heard all the time, brought new understanding, new passion to me. I left that weekend with so many questions, and not just where does the knee fall in this pose, or how straight is the spine supposed to be in that pose, but why do we think so much, why are we so unaware of what is around us? I couldn’t believe how much I had learned in such a short amount of time. To many, it might seem overwhelming, but to me it ignited excitement and passion. I went hom

e that night, and read the script again, began reading books, and meditated on my own. I know that every one of us in our 200 hour training left that weekend feeling empowered.

The second weekend:

We conquered a lot during the second weekend. We meditated, practiced; we even went all the way through the 5th step of the script! I even began a journal of simply “AH-HA Moments.” It includes everything, from the fact that my hips don’t need to be square in standing bow all the way to heartfelt, emotional phrases or comments being said in class. On the last day we began a conversation that was eye-opening and full of emotions.

When we started to discuss the Eight Limb Path, we started talking about Ashima (nonviolence). In my little journal, I jotted down the word Love next to this. This conversation blossomed into something powerful. I know that we all felt it in that room. We began to talk about self-love, and love for others. But we live in a world where so many people live so blissfully unaware, myself included. We are unaware that everything we do is felt by others. We are unaware that we are pursuing what we already have.  We are unaware that we cannot give love or happiness to others, when you don’t have it (or realize that you have it) for yourself.  That hit home.

At a very early age, I began making choices that lead me down a very bad path. I stayed on that road until I met Joe, and then I made a choice to change my life for better. Being sick for so long, and living in addiction made me a very selfish person. I wasn’t worried about anyone or anything else; I was simply worried about numbing myself from the pain I was creating.

As I was sitting there, listening to all of this, I began to be overwhelmed with emotion. I began to face all the things I had overcome, and dealt with. I realized how much growing and understanding I need to do. But most importantly, I realized that I needed to forgive myself, and love myself. I couldn’t hold on to the mistakes I have made, and those bad choices only lead me to that very moment. Sitting on a yoga mat, with food in my belly, a wonderful home with a wonderful man and my family is happy and healthy. So I asked myself, why can’t you forgive, when you are exactly where you are supposed to be.

This experience of Yax Yoga Concepts Teacher Training is so much more than I ever hoped for. It is nowhere near, just a “go learn to teach yoga” class. This is a LIFE class. I am learning more about myself and the world I live in and I’m surrounded by like-minded people who are discovering just as much about themselves, and their world. As I drove away that day, I repeated one of the best quotes from my AH-HA Journal “If you don’t know yourself, how do you know your boundaries? Our personalities?”  That weekend made me realize that having a strong foundation in ourselves will give us the tools we need to give love to others. And what matters more than love in this world? Nothing.

Posted:
06/13/2012
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First Person Experience: Yax Yoga Concepts Teacher Training Weekend 2

Readjusting to this teacher training room is difficult, not because of the room, but because of life outside the room. Picture going from sitting in a hot tub and jumping into a really cold pool, teacher training is the hot tub and life outside is the cold pool.

Yax Yoga Concepts teacher training is a place where you learn the intricacies of yoga poses, but it’s also a place you can talk and hang out with people who are like-minded. There are people from all ages, life experiences and backgrounds, which make for a very dynamic group. Hearing stories, experiences and feelings is really quite interesting. It can range from a really silly yoga experience to a deep, meaningful portion of a person’s life. It left me thinking, when in “life” does that ever happen? When do you sit with a group of people sharing the good and the bad openly like this? I sit with people all the time, in meetings, in waiting rooms, at the DMV – we don’t ever communicate on this level. What makes this particular experience so special? Is it really only one commonality that bonds us in this way? What if one small thing is all it takes?

This feeling sat with me all weekend and on the third day, we touched back around to the spiritual principles of yoga, more specifically the Eight Limb Path. The first weekend, we grazed this topic, but Sunday was the full on beginning of the explanation. We began with the Yamas, which asks the question, “how do you live in this world”; they (yamas) encourage us to examine our relationships with the people in our lives and the world around us. Beryl Bender Birch writes, “You can take yoga classes, you can do yoga postures, you can read books about yoga and you can heehaw around and say you are ‘doing’ yoga. But you aren’t really doing yoga until you sit down with the 5 Yamas and take stock of yourself”.

“Take stock of yourself” – ok, I have a job, money in my wallet, a pet, my car is running, I’m not pissed at anyone right now, I’m healthy. This is not the “taking stock” that Birch is talking about. The Yamas get deep, like really deep, uncomfortable, and face your issues deep. I really felt like the Yamas slapped me in my face. For example, Ahimsa is non-violence, practicing loving kindness. I thought to myself well I’m kind to people, I’m non-violent – I have this one. No way, wrong! Violence can be expressed passively in our thoughts and attitudes also. All those times I was proud of myself for not punching someone (let’s face it, I wouldn’t do that), but I WANTED to and that was just as bad.

I drove home the long way on Sunday night. My car windows down and I was just bewildered, was I late to the party? Does everyone know this but me? I have SO much work to do on myself. I felt this sense of clarity but anxiety at the same time. My usual New England stoicism was failing me and I just started to cry. Then I thought how crazy I must look, crying, with this panicky expression on my face. It’s like I couldn’t unfurrow my brow, the Yamas smacked me clear in my repressed feelings. This must be what personal or spiritual growth feels like and it’s pretty uncomfortable, yet the clarity in my mind made it less so.

I’m not saying that something clicked and I don’t get irritated and I levitate or anything, but what I am saying is that with awareness, things that would usually bother me make me less angry. I’m continually more aware of how I treat people and how I treat myself. This awareness has given me the tools to manage my life better. Sitting down with the Yamas that Sunday was one of the best things I’ve done all year; what’s nice about that moment is I’ll have it to practice for the rest of my life. Being aware or present moment awareness is a tool I’ll have forever because I paid attention for a few hours on a Sunday. I’m so grateful for that.

Posted:
05/30/2012
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First Person Experience: Yax Yoga Concepts Teacher Training Weekend 1

In the spirit of full disclosure, you should know two things before you read this: I work at Hot House Yoga as the marketing director and if you asked anyone who knows me if they thought I’d be training to be a yoga teacher they would laugh in your face.

Now, that all the “keeping it real” info is out of the way, I am training to be a yoga instructor and some of the people I’ve told have laughed and others say “that will be so good for you”. The latter leads me to believe I may need to relax or slow myself down, perhaps that’s true. I’ll admit, if you asked me a year ago whether I’d be into completing a yoga teacher training; I, myself, may have laughed at you.

I certainly felt slightly out of my element in yoga teacher training; I wasn’t negotiating media rates, or deciding on campaigns, etc. I was learning about the very thing I market. Now, I know enough about what we do and have enough support of amazing, knowledgeable yogis and yoginis around me to get by, but what really drove me to take the training was to know these things myself.

The first weekend was a few weeks ago. I was excited, nervous and “not ready” all at the same time. To explain “not ready”, I felt like I had to do yoga every day, meditate and eat only green things to be really committed to training. To which I’ve learned is a bit silly, a consistent practice is important, but to say I have to practice every day and radically change my habits to prepare is like saying “I have to be flexible to try yoga” – silly right?! The first day was fun, but sort of intense as there isn’t a lot of time to ease into it and we opened our books and got started immediately. We were asked “who do you want to be” and “what type of experience do I want to have”. I sort of blankly stared at the two questions thinking “WHAT have I gotten myself into”, but strangely the words just sort of came and to paraphrase my long answer: I would like to move through life with grace.

Now, I wasn’t even sure what that answer meant or how it came to me, but it did. So I rolled with it. Only now do I see how that phrase is applicable to my life and why it’s important. The realization of this came with my homework – meditation. Now, a year earlier I would have been laughing at myself, so if you are laughing at me now. I accept this, but hear me out. The act of sitting quietly, thoughtless, with attention to my breath has changed the way I feel every single day. If I miss a day (totally outing myself on missing some homework) I feel weird, like something is missing. In no way have I mastered the act of meditation and frankly based on my limited experience I don’t even think mastery is possible (another interesting thing I learned from teacher training – be content to practice. The overachiever in me has a hard time with the idea that mastery is nearly impossible but I’m okay with that most days). The act of being less hard on myself has spilled out into other aspects of my life. Therefore, I am moving more gracefully in my everyday life, accidentally – if that makes sense.

Another thing I wrote down is the realization that we are so fragile. Our bodies, our minds; it’s almost unbelievable that we are so strong, yet so fragile at the same time. Learning about the way the body is built, the networks of muscles, how they affect each other, why we don’t stand up straight etc. has made me very aware of posture. I’m an observer by nature, but now I’m almost obsessed with looking at people’s posture (not in a judgmental way) but thinking about how yoga could help them stand straighter and how just the act of standing that way would help their joints, health, etc. I imagine the cues I would give them to obtain this balance (I suppose this is where my over-achieving creeps in).

I’ve taken this newfound awareness a step further (insert overachiever status here) and tied a string to my wrist to remind me of teacher training and how the weekend felt. I was present, learning and patient/tolerant with myself and others. The string acts as my reminder that inside the wound up, overachiever is a person who is able to enjoy meditation and dream of helping others with something as simple yet complex as yoga.