Teacher Training
Tonight was the first Hot Power Fusion class I’ve taken since our posture clinic last week in teacher training. In the posture clinic last week, we learned how to cue postures in the CorePower Yoga HPF sequence, starting at the beginning with the Standing Sun A Series all the way through the Flowing Balancing Series, ending at Balancing Stick pose and at the first and only official water break in class. That’s a total of 17 postures, give or take, and a whole lot of cues to remember!
For the first time ever, class for me was less about relieving stress from the day and more about focusing on the mechanics of the series. My intention for class tonight was to listen carefully to the dialogue Jill used. I wanted to see if I could pick out the cue formula (verb, body part, direction), the three cues she’d use for each posture, anticipate the inhales/exhales for each posture before she cued them and visualize my flashcards as we went through each posture. I’m still working on memorizing the HPF sequence so I figured taking an HPF class with this focused intention would be great practice.
As we went through the first part of class, I felt overwhelmed. Jill didn’t just give three cues for each posture like our teacher training handbook suggests. She gave several cues and somehow made it all flow together in a nice rhythm from one posture to the next. By the time we got to Cobra Pose, at the beginning of the Spine Strengthening series, I was panicking. How was I going to be able to memorize this whole sequence and be able to give cues on each posture for an entire hour-long class? What if I blanked again like I did last Sunday during our teacher training session? And of course there was a lot of self-doubt running through my head, questioning whether or not I’d be a good yoga teacher. Normally taking a yoga class helps me shut off the negative self-talk going on my head, but I couldn’t seem to shut it off. I mentally beat myself up for most of class tonight.
I did enjoy the awesome hands-on assist I received from Jill in Half Tortoise Pose. In this pose, I can never seem to keep my hips/butt down on my feet. My butt always seems to go up in the air as I lower my body down to my mat. During this posture, Jill came over and gently sat on my hips and lower back, as I was facedown on my mat. For once, I could feel my feet on my backside. It felt great. Then as I came out of the posture, she helped me keep my hips down as I reached my arms up. That was probably my favorite part of class.
Class #14, Hot Power Fusion at CorePower Yoga Ballard with Jill (HPF-9)