Teaching yoga has changed my own practice. I have less time for it, and I spend much of it working out things to teach. This has been good - I've uncovered new insights by thinking about the details of poses and how to teach them most effectively - but I also want to maintain my own practice.
After work yesterday, I began to practice with the idea that I would do back bends, making my way toward wheel pose (urdhva dhanurasana). I rolled out the mat and followed my first impulse, making my way to downward facing dog. From there I brought one leg forward and under, opening up in a side plank variation, then back to dog and down to my belly for the first back bends - a series of cobra poses with the breath, starting with a tiny lift and gradually extending them up to a full cobra.
The next 40 minutes or so I followed my instincts from one pose to another, through more back bends, balance poses, and strengthening exercises, mixing some things I've been teaching recently with things I haven't practiced in months.
At one point my right leg felt noticeably tighter than the left in a hamstring stretch, so I paused to work down that leg with a tennis ball, from the top of the hamstring down to the bottom of the calf. That helped a lot, as I expected.
Practicing freely can lead to unexpected, interesting things. After my first wheel pose, I came down and immediately lifted my legs and upper body into navasana (boat pose). That was interesting. So I did them both again. The full back bend of wheel followed by the front body ab and hip flexor engaging boat pose. It is unlikely I would every have thought to pair those two poses, but practicing freely and instinctively led me to them.
I hope as I teach that I can show students how to go beyond just following my instructions, and develop a practice of their own that lets them follow their own bodies and instincts to interesting places.
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