February 28, 2016
Are you wondering where the picture is for this blog post? I left it blank intentionally because that’s what happened to my mind during the second part of our yoga teacher training group session today.
For our third yoga teacher training group session, we jumped right back into where we had left off in the posture clinic during our last session. Today, we covered 10 different postures in the sequence, back-to-back including: Half Lift Pose/Ardha Uttanasana, Squat and Curl (or as the training leaders like to call it, Crouch and Curl), Half Moon Pose/Ardha Chandrasana, Back Bend Pose/Anuvittasana (my favorite!), Hands To Feet Pose/Padahastasana, Awkward Pose 1st Part/Utkatasana, Awkward Pose 2nd Part/Utkatasana, Awkward Pose 3rd Part/Utkatasana, Eagle Pose/Garudasana and Eagle Armed Airplane Pose/Garudasana Dakasana. Just like we did during our previous group session, we learned the Sanskrit name for each posture, took turns being cued by each other into the posture from the previous posture in the sequence, covered cues to use during class and discussed how we could help correct misalignments and modifications for each posture. Holy moly it was a lot of information to take in.
During the last part of class, we set up our mats and took turns being a teacher, cueing each other into all of the postures we’ve covered so far, from the Standing Sun A Series all the way through the Flowing Balancing Series. It’s hard to believe we’ve already covered a third of the HPF sequence and its only day three! During this exercise, we had to cue each other without the use of our notes. The training leaders would randomly call on someone in class and have them pick up where the last person left off cueing the postures in the series.
I was the second person in class to be called on to cue postures during the exercise. As soon as I stood in front of the room, I blanked. It was like I had never taken a Hot Power Fusion class before. In my moment of panic, I struggled to try to remember even the Bikram Yoga series, in hopes of helping me remember what posture was supposed to come next, but nothing came to mind. There was just a blank screen in my head. Luckily, the training leaders were in the back of the room and gave hints on what the next posture to be cued was. As soon as I said something out loud, I’d completely forget what I had said. I got all of the inhales and exhales wrong. I stumbled my way through the exercise. By the end of our session, I beat myself up mentally over my performance during the exercise in class today.
Before leaving the studio, I received some words of encouragement from a couple of my fellow classmates as well as both of the training leaders. This was our first time getting up in front of a class and teaching yoga. How could I expect something like this to be easy? Teaching a yoga class is WAY more different than just taking one. I couldn’t expect it to be perfect. No one was. And yes, even though this was only day three, it was good to get a frightening experience like this out of the way so early on in training. I mean, I could only get better from here, right? I see a lot of flashcards and practice in my near future.