I greatly enjoy teaching yoga. It energizes me and makes me feel good. I meet many nice people whom I'd never meet otherwise, and I feel that I'm helpful to them.
Tonight I taught as a substitute in a large class. The regular teacher is a mentor and contacted me just a few hours before class to say she wasn't feeling well. So instead of walking right home after work, I stopped off at the studio, which is about a third of the way home, to teach.
Yoga brings to me a sense of satisfaction and joy that is far beyond what I experience at work, even on the best days. The more I teach, the more comfortable I get and the more tools I have to work with the students. I'm on a pace to reach 500 hours of teaching in my first year and a half, which is far more than I could have hoped when I taught my first class.
Teaching that much has squeezed out some other things in my life, like composing music and having time to read, but I think it has been valuable to have the focus and concentration, and simply get a lot of teaching experience.
Monday, November 30, 2015
Sunday, November 29, 2015
Hurrying
Hurrying is a sure sign to me that I'm not fully present, that I am out of the flow. Hurrying doesn't have to do with how quickly your moving. It is about the desire to be somewhere else, sooner than you perceive will happen. So you hurry. Your awareness closes down to see things around you from the simple perspective of how they affect your progress. Are they slowing you down, in your way? Annoyance, frustration. More hurrying.
If you’re hurrying, you're out of the flow. Hurrying won't speed your progress, but it will certainly make you feel stressed and unhappy.
On the other hand, if you’re present to what’s around you, go with the flow, and make space for others, you’ll slip through and around with ease.
I've convinced that everything truly important about being a human has been known for a long time. Here's a quote from Zhuang Zhou, who lived in China from around 369 BC to 286 BC:
Flow with whatever is happening and let your mind be free. Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.
We each have to learn it for ourselves, though. It's only be experiencing it in our own lives that the thought becomes meaning, and can change how we live.
Saturday, November 28, 2015
A Well-Spent Hour
The Friday after Thanksgiving was a beautiful day, warm in the sun, leaves piled up, trees mostly bare. I walked down to the creek to sit for a while. It had been several months since I'd done that. There was sun on the rock by the creek. I brushed the dry leaves off and they floated down over the little waterfall. There's a shimmer on the creekside rocks from sun reflecting off the rippled water, and the musty scent of autumn.
Downstream, there's a gravel bar where robins are flying in to drink and bathe. Sunlit droplets fly as the birds shake in the water, bringing a smile to my face, a joyous little bit of grace. A breeze riffles through the leaves and feels cool on my face and ankles.
The water flows. It has been months since I sat here, watching the water flow by, and the water has been there, as it will be the next time I go.
Crows caw high up in the bare poplar branches. Most leaves are down, but there are still some - green, golden, and russet, along with the ever green needles of some tall pines. I toss a leaf in the water and watch it float down, over the little falls, into the foam below. Little rafts of bubbles float by. As bubbles pop, the raft reforms, closing the space, growing smaller. If two rafts get close enough, they seem to attract each other and then touch and merge, rearranging into a circular shape.
Clouds drift in, hiding the sun. The spinning Earth, like the flowing water, in constant motion. Because I'm spinning with the Earth, the Sun appears to move across the sky. After awhile, the sun reappears, farther west and lower down, and the shimmer on the rocks reappears.
I drift off a little. When I wake it is the burble of the falls and the call of a bird that center in my attention. Many people are out today, walking, running, playing at the playground. I feel the coolness of the boulder I'm sitting on. It's time to move on.
Downstream, there's a gravel bar where robins are flying in to drink and bathe. Sunlit droplets fly as the birds shake in the water, bringing a smile to my face, a joyous little bit of grace. A breeze riffles through the leaves and feels cool on my face and ankles.
The water flows. It has been months since I sat here, watching the water flow by, and the water has been there, as it will be the next time I go.
Crows caw high up in the bare poplar branches. Most leaves are down, but there are still some - green, golden, and russet, along with the ever green needles of some tall pines. I toss a leaf in the water and watch it float down, over the little falls, into the foam below. Little rafts of bubbles float by. As bubbles pop, the raft reforms, closing the space, growing smaller. If two rafts get close enough, they seem to attract each other and then touch and merge, rearranging into a circular shape.
Clouds drift in, hiding the sun. The spinning Earth, like the flowing water, in constant motion. Because I'm spinning with the Earth, the Sun appears to move across the sky. After awhile, the sun reappears, farther west and lower down, and the shimmer on the rocks reappears.
I drift off a little. When I wake it is the burble of the falls and the call of a bird that center in my attention. Many people are out today, walking, running, playing at the playground. I feel the coolness of the boulder I'm sitting on. It's time to move on.
Thursday, November 12, 2015
I Feel Light
When I arrived at the yoga studio this evening, I saw a man who had come for the first time last week. He said, "When I left last week to walk to the car, I felt lighter... my body had energy."
After class, another man said, "I feel light after class... there's a lightness..."
There's great power in simple, conscious movement - bringing energy, buoyancy, lightness - and perhaps most of all, awakening awareness to the body and the joy of movement that has been gradually drained away by years of sedentary life. How interesting that both men identified the change they noticed as lightness. To me, that speaks of a sense of ease and more gracefulness in movement.
After class, another man said, "I feel light after class... there's a lightness..."
There's great power in simple, conscious movement - bringing energy, buoyancy, lightness - and perhaps most of all, awakening awareness to the body and the joy of movement that has been gradually drained away by years of sedentary life. How interesting that both men identified the change they noticed as lightness. To me, that speaks of a sense of ease and more gracefulness in movement.
Wednesday, November 11, 2015
A Fall Morning
With the change to standard time on November 1 dawn come earlier. In early fall, it's dark at 6 am, and on clear days I can see the stars and planets on my walk to yoga or work. Then the time change comes, and by 6 am it's beginning to get light.
Even so, this morning I had a good view of the three planets that are lined up in the eastern sky. Brightest, and closest to the horizon, is Venus. Above and to the right, is the dimmer, redder Mars. Almost in line with them, still farther up to the right, is Jupiter - by far the largest, and farthest away.
I stopped and watched for a bit, thinking about the geometry involved - Venus closer to the sun than Earth, and Mars and Saturn farther away - but aligned in orbit so the three appeared in the same small patch of the sky. I thought of the marvelous sensitivity of sight - that I can see the faint reflection of light that has travelled half a billion miles from the Sun to Jupiter and reflected back another half billion or so miles to the tiny patch of receptor cells in my eyes.
Soon the Earth will turn into the Sun's streaming field of light, and the planets and stars will fade into the morning sky. But the stars are still bright enough that I spot Orion rotating off to the west, not hanging right overhead as it does this time of morning early in the fall.
A crisp breeze blew as I walked on, vibrating leaves free from the trees to twirl and flutter down to the ground, where my feet made swishing, crunching sounds in the growing piles.
Energy. It's all energy - the light, the sound, the movement of the wind, the downward pull of gravity, that keeps my feet on the ground, draws the fluttering leaves down, and keeps the planets in their orbits - and my awareness of it all.
Even so, this morning I had a good view of the three planets that are lined up in the eastern sky. Brightest, and closest to the horizon, is Venus. Above and to the right, is the dimmer, redder Mars. Almost in line with them, still farther up to the right, is Jupiter - by far the largest, and farthest away.
I stopped and watched for a bit, thinking about the geometry involved - Venus closer to the sun than Earth, and Mars and Saturn farther away - but aligned in orbit so the three appeared in the same small patch of the sky. I thought of the marvelous sensitivity of sight - that I can see the faint reflection of light that has travelled half a billion miles from the Sun to Jupiter and reflected back another half billion or so miles to the tiny patch of receptor cells in my eyes.
Soon the Earth will turn into the Sun's streaming field of light, and the planets and stars will fade into the morning sky. But the stars are still bright enough that I spot Orion rotating off to the west, not hanging right overhead as it does this time of morning early in the fall.
A crisp breeze blew as I walked on, vibrating leaves free from the trees to twirl and flutter down to the ground, where my feet made swishing, crunching sounds in the growing piles.
Energy. It's all energy - the light, the sound, the movement of the wind, the downward pull of gravity, that keeps my feet on the ground, draws the fluttering leaves down, and keeps the planets in their orbits - and my awareness of it all.
Sunday, November 1, 2015
Conscious of Gravity
Gravity, that attractive force between matter/energy, is a constant presence in yoga practice. No matter what shape I move my body into, some part of it is touching the ground, and all my weight - weight simply being the force by which the mass of my body is pulled toward the mass of the Earth - is pulled through that point in the direction of the center of the Earth.
If I am not centered above that base of support, I lose my balance. There is no lead time, no warning. Gravity is always on, it's not as if you lose your balance, and then gravity pulls you down. It's a single event.
To exist and function in gravity, my body has built in systems that keep me aligned, keep my weight over my base of support, without conscious thought. Conscious thought is too slow to successfully maintain balance under the relentless, constant pull of gravity.
The body knows how to balance. Yoga begins to connect my conscious mind to those processes, so I am aware of gravity acting on my body, and how my body stays in balance as it moves from one position to another. When balance is lost, conscious awareness can look at the experience and suggest changes.
Today, leading a class, I lost my balance to the outside edge of my foot, something that hasn't happened for months. Interesting. I don't know the cause, but I know what we were doing right before - a deep Warrior I backbend. I'm going to explore that more, to see if something is carrying over in my alignment or muscular actions that could lead to imbalance. I may also find that it was just something that happened, in that moment, and no cause or pattern will be revealed.
If I am not centered above that base of support, I lose my balance. There is no lead time, no warning. Gravity is always on, it's not as if you lose your balance, and then gravity pulls you down. It's a single event.
To exist and function in gravity, my body has built in systems that keep me aligned, keep my weight over my base of support, without conscious thought. Conscious thought is too slow to successfully maintain balance under the relentless, constant pull of gravity.
The body knows how to balance. Yoga begins to connect my conscious mind to those processes, so I am aware of gravity acting on my body, and how my body stays in balance as it moves from one position to another. When balance is lost, conscious awareness can look at the experience and suggest changes.
Today, leading a class, I lost my balance to the outside edge of my foot, something that hasn't happened for months. Interesting. I don't know the cause, but I know what we were doing right before - a deep Warrior I backbend. I'm going to explore that more, to see if something is carrying over in my alignment or muscular actions that could lead to imbalance. I may also find that it was just something that happened, in that moment, and no cause or pattern will be revealed.
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