Tonight was my last class of a busy yoga teaching week. From last Friday through today, I taught 14 classes. Until I counted them up, I hadn't realized how many there were. I'm surprised I don't feel more exhausted, but now I'll have a break for a couple of days before Sunday, which is my busiest day most weeks, with three classes.
While teaching so much has taken up a lot of time, it also has made me a much better teacher more quickly. Some new teachers barely manage to find one regular class a week to teach, so I have been very fortunate. I also work hard at it, continually looking for new things to teach and trying new things in my own practice. I keep detailed notes about every class I teach. Perhaps one day I'll feel that is no longer useful, but I find it helpful to refer back to what I did previously for a class, or I'll use the notes for a particularly successful class as the starting point for the next class I teach. But I've never taught two classes using exactly the same poses in the same order.
Teaching a class has a strong improvisational component - reacting to what I'm seeing and sensing from the students. Of course, improvisation without sound preparation and structure is just chaos. There has to be a balance of preparation and spontaneity in each class, and each class I'm trying to find it.
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