Taught my Yoga Trainee Class Yesterday

So yesterday I taught a class at the yoga studio for two of my fellow trainees and one of the teachers. Man oh man I was a mess for a little while beforehand. I wanted to be really impressive but of course you can't just become someone with ten years of yoga teaching experience in 4 months. And I had something all prepared to say in the beginning of the class and I got flustered and it didn't come out the way that I wanted it to, and I was pretty worried about sounding stupid, which I might have. Note to self: write it out in complete sentences and bring it with you to class.

The other thing about it was that I didn't have any music - this is a whole additional dimension that I just wasn't ready to incorporate. Plus they have ipod hook ups at the studio and yo no tiene un "ipod." The silence had a mixed effect - on the one hand, I like silence when I am practicing because sometimes it really distracts me; silence helps you go within a little better, I think. On the other hand, golly gee a little music goes a long way in carrying the vibe along in the room - I noticed that my voice and its timbre were a little more serious than I think of myself being, and so that was kind of the vibe I was making, I'm sure. But I could have added a little levity to the experience with some happy tunes. I went to another trainee's class yesterday and she had really fun, sassy pop and jazz music playing, and it just went really well with her whole vibe and vision and it has restored a little of my interest in having music to go along with the experience.

The feedback I got from the teacher and my two fellow students was a little mixed - the class was sort of lacking in back bends, which means that a more advanced student might not feel all that "complete" upon leaving the class - exploring a full range of physical movement is good for that all-over "yoga-ed" feeling. This was good advice, and my class was hampered in this respect by my own limitations with back bending (exxxtreme limitations!) and by my own class planning - I spent a little too much time on the stading poses and by the time we were done I saw that we kind of had to wrap it up, and I really wanted the class to be exactly one hour and thirty minutes, no fudging. Also maybe the class could have been harder, they said - they were wondering when we were really going to go for it, but then they felt that the challenge and difficulty of the class wasn't necessarily in the lots and lots of movement sense, but more in the precision sense. If that's true then that's awesome.

Some stuff I see will come with time, like fluidity of speech, and general confidence, and all that stuff - and I just have to keep doing more and more yoga at home and become really familiar with what I want to communicate, and things will only get better, I just have to practice. I can't wait to practice on my friends on Sunday!