blogoversary and an extract

Today is my two year blogoversary, so yay for me! Way back when I made that first post I was just on the verge of giving up my corporate job to teach yoga full time. I had no idea what the future held and I certainly had no idea how many great bloggers I was going to connect with through this medium.

Life's changed even more since then what with our move to Cambridge last year - and I have great hopes for the future!

So to celebrate the last two years, I thought I'd tell you about one of the many steps on my journey from yoga student to teacher (not that we ever stop being students of course!).

(Mr Park say "oh hai")

One of the hardest lessons you have to learn as a yoga teacher is to not take things personally. The first time nobody turned up to class I wept and wept. It wasn’t until the next day I realised I’d got my term dates wrong and everybody assumed we were still on vacation. Sometimes people come to class, sometimes they don’t. It’s not your fault. You don’t know what’s going on in their lives and shocking as it may seem, yoga class doesn’t always take priority.

Sometimes you will get a student who comes once, and then you never see her again. You have to learn not to beat yourself up about that too. Sometimes they just won’t like you and that’s OK, because if it wasn’t for not liking a teacher, I wouldn’t be teaching yoga myself.

I used to go to a lunchtime yoga class twice a week at the gym near my office. It was perfect – it stretched my body and relaxed my mind halfway through a stressful day. No matter how busy we were at work, or how badly my boss didn’t want me to take a lunch break, I always made sure on Tuesdays and Thursdays I got to my midday yoga class. My sanity, and thus the sanity of the rest of my department, depended on it.

This particular Thursday the regular yoga teacher was away. I was always disappointed when my regular teacher was away. It happens to all of us. There is always a strange sense of loss when a cover teacher arrives. I’ve seen it in the eyes of students when I have covered another teacher’s class for them. I see it in my own student’s eyes when I tell them I won’t be there the next week and another teacher will take the class. Much as we know intellectually that we shouldn’t be attached to one teacher and one style of teaching, emotionally it is far harder to let go.

So let’s return to that distant Thursday lunchtime. I unrolled my mat with a feeling of frustration, not knowing what was in store.

I then took what, at that time, seemed to me to be the worst yoga class of my life. There was no flow, we seemed to be up and down and up and down more times than (insert suitable metaphor here!), and before I knew it, almost apoplectic with internal rage I found myself against the wall being told to “press myself against the mirror”. I’m sorry to say that I then did the unthinkable, perhaps one of the rudest things I have ever done. I walked out of the class before it had finished.

I never do this. I’m one of those people who stay in the cinema until the bitter end even when the film is so long and boring I think I may pass away. I always finish books, even those with which I lose interest on about page twenty and when it comes to yoga classes I am the mistress of etiquette. I never arrive late and I never, ever leave early. I always stay until after Savasana and the closing meditation. Except for this one time.

To this day I can’t tell you what drove me so mad about this teacher. To be honest, I can’t remember her name or what she looked like or much else about the class, apart from having to press myself against the mirror.

Later that afternoon I bemoaned to my office mate about the uselessness of my lunchtime teacher.

“I could do better,” I said.

She smiled. She knew nothing at all about yoga but she did know me.

“I know you could,” she said. “So why don’t you?”

~~~~

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early memories (an extract)

(mum and dad c. 1978 - apologies for lack of framing in photo, I was only 4)

My mother used to go to a yoga class once a week. I would have been about 4 or 5 and I remember watching her get ready thinking how elegant she looked in her leotard and footless tights, her long hair hanging down her back. It must have been Thursdays because I used to stay home with my Nan and watch Top of the Pops in my personal favourite evening attire of red dressing gown and Adidas trainers. This yoga, I thought to myself as I danced along to the music on the television imagining what my mother was doing at that moment, must be a beautiful thing. When I grow up I want to do that.


(me with my Nan outside Kings College Chapel, Cambridge c.1978 - check out my tree pose!)

I didn’t have to grow up by much. I went to my first yoga class alongside my mum when I was about 7 or 8 years old and I don’t really remember a time when yoga wasn’t a part of my life.

I wasn’t what you would call a sporty child at school. In fact I was rubbish. Everything always hurt, everything always seemed so difficult. I remember one summer practicing backward somersaults in the back garden all weekend just so I wouldn’t be the laughing stock in gym class the next week, as usual. I never really questioned my bad co-ordination, I just thought we can’t all be good at everything and left it at that. After all I had something that my classmates didn’t. I had yoga.

When I was 15 and working for my Duke of Edinburgh Bronze award, I chose yoga as my “sport” module. When I was 18 and I was doing a lot of performance art alongside my A Levels, I found yoga helped me stretch, breathe, relax. When I was travelling, yoga was a talking point with other backpackers. When I was at university, the Tuesday night yoga class became the hub of my social life, although looking back I suspect I had quite a sedate university education in comparison to a lot of my peers. Yoga was just there. It never felt like a sport, or a gym class. It just felt like my body moving in the way it needed to move, powered by my breath, as my mind stilled and my stresses, my tensions, my worries fell away.

Despite all this it was years before I considered teaching yoga for a living. I still remembered the little girl who couldn’t do a backward somersault to save her life. Who wanted to be taught yoga by her? But then the strangest thing happened. My dad qualified as a yoga teacher.

(dad and me on his 70th birthday - November 2008)

Now I love my dad very much, but if you saw him, you just couldn’t picture it. He’s a slightly overweight accountant who does love a glass of wine now and again (well now really). I guess somewhere along the line mum must have dragged him along to a class too and, like me, he just had to keep going back. Before he knew it he was signed up on a teacher training course.

I talk about how yoga is for EVERYONE a lot, but this was my turning point. This is the point when I realised that yoga isn’t about how strong you are or what you look like. It isn’t about how “perfect” your postures are, or whether you are wearing the right clothes. It isn’t even about austere living and strict rules. I realised that most aspiring yogis and yoginis are just ordinary folk like me with bad back, dodgy hips and podgy tummies, with ordinary jobs that on some days they can't stand, and ordinary families who, on some days, can’t stand them. And I realised that maybe I could share my experiences of yoga with other people too, just like my dad.

Yogi(ni) readers, what are your earliest memories of yoga? Where did they take you?

Non Yogi(ni) readers, what is your passion, and what are your earliest memories of it?

wicked warrior and sassy statistics

One of the (many) things I love about yoga is the many many different approaches to asana practice. Some of them work with my body, some of them don't, but there really is something for everyone.

Take Virabhadrasana 1 for example (this pose came up in my twenty minute sequence the other day). This is a relatively modern posture, it certainly doesn't pop up in any of the classical texts and as such there are many different approaches to it. This Yoga Journal article runs through five of the main ones. I tend to teach this posture in the Viniyoga tradition, like Gary Kraftsow in this article, but give them all a try and see which one works for you. I'd be interested to know!

There is also a potted history of the story behind the name of this posture.

~~~

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a break from yoga?

(today’s post inspiration brought to you by babs)

It came as quite a shock to me to realise I have been practicing yoga pretty much consistently for nearly 20 years! I may still think I’m 17 in my head but it turns out I’m not. (I currently have a 17 year old work experience girl working with me and she is a constant reminder that I am getting OLD!!!)

I digress!

I practiced yoga with my mum as a child, not continually but certainly on and off. But apart from a three year break where I defected to Pilates, I have been practicing regularly since I was 16. At first it was just a good balance to all the dance classes I was doing. Then it was just a good balance for my head whilst I wrote my thesis (both of them!). It started to become a basic daily necessity of my life about 10 years ago when I first started living and working in London. A girl has to find that bit of peace where she can!

That natural progression from all this was, of course, to train to teach. The training was primarily to develop my own understanding of yoga. Ending up being a full time yoga teacher for two years was just one of those things that happened almost by mistake.

So what has all this to do with breaks from yoga?

I haven’t taken a substantial break from my own practice for a long time, other than the odd week here and there when I’ve been on holiday or sick. When I do take these short breaks I feel it. I come back to my mat refreshed and raring to go, but I do miss it while I’m away. I never feel I need to take substantial breaks away from my mat.

The break I’m talking about here is with teaching. After two years of teaching full time I’m sorry to say it really started to feel like a job. All jobs, no matter how much you love them, have elements of dull plodding routine. All jobs have at least one aspect that isn’t fun. I loved teaching yoga. What I didn’t love was marketing, finances, doing my tax return. Everything became a bit too much and that joy of yoga, that I have spoken about before started to disappear.

Apart from the odd cover class I haven’t taught yoga since last September. The break ahs been good. I have been able to re-evaluate my own practice and I’m working with a great teacher again. I have great teaching opportunities coming up and after my break I’m ready for them.

But this time I’m grabbing them with balance and mindfulness. I do, after all, have a terrible habit of doing too much which is probably another post for another time!

things i love thursday (2)

Aurora

Johnny Park

(pictures of the gruesome twosome because we haven't had any in a while and also in honour of Dave Grohl's birthday, as my cats are named after Foo Fighters songs!)

1. I started the creative writing course that Ma and Pa Yogini bought me for Christmas on Monday night. It made me remember why I write, how I write, when I write best and that actually, maybe I’m quite good at this. But more than anything it was so nice to be back in a university seminar room with like minded (and fabulously eccentric) people again. You don’t realise how much you miss things until you get them back. And you forget how there are some things that you just need to keep you going.

2. All my lovely potential clients booking onto this yoga course.

3. Sending off two pieces of writing this week. Just getting stuff out there feels fantastic, regardless of the results.

4. The new single from Laura Marling.

5. Home & Away is back after its Christmas break (I know, lame. But I'm hopelessly addicted and it makes me happy).

Your turn!

happy things to be thankful for

• Teaching again. Last week and this week I have been teaching yoga again for the first time since we moved (about 3 months). Whilst it has rendered me bone tired having been crazy busy at work again, I had forgotten just how much I love it. The first night I was so nervous but as soon as I started it all came flooding back and I thought "oh how I've missed this!"
• A vat of homemade Yellow Split Pea Daal which has kept me fed during a week when I have had next to no time to cook.
• Organic gin. Abel and Cole have their Christmas goodies in so we got some of this last week. My, oh my is it good (although of course I can only have one small one because of headaches and falling asleep!). Himself has organic Scotch, but hasn't tried it yet.
• Vegan hot chocolate (even though, despite checking everything for traces of dairy it still gave me tummy ache - why do all the yummy things hate me!)
• Binge reading.
• 100% support from Himself on a new project I want to work towards when I actually thought he would try and talk me out of it on the grounds of "doing too much".
• The "it's nearly here" feeling of a 10 day break over Christmas!
• A rumour that (shhhh!) it might snow!!!

On living with Fibromyalgia

Learning to live with Fibromyalgia has taught me many things. And what I’m learning right now is to be kind to myself, not to expect so much from myself all the time.

Whilst I was only formally diagnosed with Fibro a couple of years ago, I’m pretty sure I have suffered on and off since I was about 17. At first they said it was “growing pains”. When I pointed out I wasn’t growing anymore they called it ME. Somewhere along the line that got changed to CFS (although I’m pretty sure they’re the same thing) and now it’s got another name! Whatever you call it, in the long run it amounts to the same thing – exhaustion, headaches, a 15 year sore throat (!!) and, coupled with the scoliosis, pretty much constant chronic pain.

Now before I go on I want to say that this isn’t a self-pity post. This isn’t a “Why Me?” lament (because, as I have said before, “Why Not Me?”). This is just a reminder of how far I’ve come.

One of the hardest things I’ve had to deal with is other people’s attitudes. ME has another name in the UK – “Malingerer’s Disease” – and I cannot tell you how many times people have said to me “but you don’t look ill”. No maybe I don’t, I’m a whizz with the make up brush but inside I feel like stir-fried ass – thanks for asking! ;p

But no matter how hard it’s been I’ve always tried to live my life to the fullest, to drag my sorry carcass out of bed and get on with things to the best of my endeavours. There have been times when I’ve had to put my hands up and admit that something is too much. I decided against a long-term dream of studying Archaeology because I knew my health wasn’t up to the 12 weeks a year in a tent in a field digging holes aspect of it all. But if I had studied Archaeology I would never have gone to Australia and I would certainly never have found out I could write.

And that’s it isn’t it, dear reader? Everything that happens, good or bad, gets us to where we are today. Yes, I may have to walk rather than run, I certainly can’t have more than one alcoholic drink without falling asleep and some days I have to drag that aforementioned sorry carcass back to bed. But on the other hand, I have gained an Masters degree, travelled the world (more than once) and worked in law in the City of London for nearly 10 years. And I also know without this I would never have become a yoga teacher. After years of practice that helped me keep my body strong enough to deal with pain and my mind strong enough to deal with the sadness the pain could bring and with the help of some fantastic teachers I realised that my limitations (for want of a better word) could help me reach out to people who wanted to know about yoga but had been too afraid to ask! As I tell my students, if I can do it anyone can.

I have days when the pain is too much, when it really brings me down. But we all have bad days. Right now I’m learning to accept the bad days and look after myself on them, because there are so many good days and I have achieved so much in my own little way.

Website

My new website is up and running. Want to see? OK clicky here-y!!

I haven't decided where I'm taking my yoga teaching now I've moved to Cambridge. I don't think it matters that I don't know where I'm going with it. I'm certainly not worried about it. I have so much else going on in my life and so many things I want to do. Right now I just want to put the information up and see what becomes of it. If it just becomes a community yoga website, or a rescourse for yoga and scoliosis or yoga and chronic pain and I just continue as I am, subbing classes as and when, well I'm fine with that.

I was lucky enough to do everything I needed to do with my yoga teaching when I ran Thames Yoga, I even ran a retreat in Turkey. I fulfilled every ambition I had and that is an amazing thing.

Right now I'm enjoying working on my own practice, and having most of my evenings free!

Back to the website - take a look and let me know if you see any glaringly obvious errors. Also if you know of any websites that you'd like to go on the links page then let me know.

On the role of a yoga teacher

The interwebz have been full of thoughts and answers to this question and it's something I've been mulling over for a while. I thought I'd add my two pennies for what it's worth. This is purely how *I* feel as a yoga teacher and bears no judgement whatsoever on teachers who think differently! :)

I think teachers, of any discipline, are enablers. We enable our students to reach their full potential. We encourage them to keep working, to keep improving. Sometimes our students surpass us. My mother was an English teacher for many many years and got many of her students into Oxbridge - a feat she never managed herself. Sometimes we just help our students move on to the next level.

As a yoga teacher therefore it is not imperitive that we can perform every asana we teach "perfectly" (whatever that means). In fact, in my experience, I have found that my own limitations give my students a deeper insight into their own practice. "Look at me," I say, "I can't do some of these asanas very well. Some of them I may never do in this lifetime, but I keep trying because yoga is a journey, a work in progress". I've always found this attitude makes my students realise what they are capable of, because they can see I am only human too.

Because to me what we as western yoga teachers are not is great leaders, gurus, spiritual teachers. I don't ever want to be seen that way. It makes me uncomfortable when students refer to me as their guru, or even their mentor. I am just an ordinary woman with an ordinary job who teaches some yoga because it is my greatest love. I am just helping you a little along your road in yoga. Most of the work comes from you, from deep inside. Don't become too attached to a teacher or a particular class in a particular place because this detracts from the root of yoga. That part of yoga that you carry around with you anywhere. That ability to practice, wherever you are, whenever you need to.

I am not denying there are some teachers who are able to lead the way, who are able to give deep insight into the spirit and philosophy of yoga. But if you are just an ordinary person who enjoys coming to a weekly yoga class to stretch and relax and meet people and ease your bad back then you really are the same as me. Eventually you will probably strive for more, you will look for further reading, you will self study, you will find yourself being kinder, calmer, less demanding. You may even train to teach yourself. But at the end of the day we are all the same, we are all on the yoga road. We are all in it together.

Namaste :)

First post from Cambridge!

It's been a crazy few days but I can say in good faith that we are moved in! Himself and I are like machines when it comes to moving house, neither of us can stand living out of boxes so we just unpack and unpack and unpack. Plus of course Himself has to work tomorrow so his office has to be set up. I have still to unpack books and sort out my yoga space but other than that I think we're done. Himself has even hung pictures on the walls and everything! We're both feeling very at home, both in the house and in Cambridge itself which has got to be a good thing.

In the front door and up the stairs

Our bedroom

Spare bedroom (not quite ready for guests yet though!)

Third bedroom which will be my yoga space when I've finished it! I have practiced in here a couple of times and it felt goooood!

Me doing laundry, living area to the left, Himself's office space behind me.

Through into the kitchen (me contemplating cooking!)

Through into the conservatory (various bikes!)

And saving the best til last, check out the view from the back of the house!!!

Yup, nothing but fields, we are as much on the edge of Cambridge as we can be, practically the middle of nowhere. Silence, beautiful sunsets and no people! Awesome :)

Tomorrow I have another job interview (still haven't heard anything about the last one but then I haven't heard I don't have the job so who knows?!) and am going to my first Cambridge yoga class. I have a ton of yoga contacts here in Cambridge who I'm going to hook up with over the next few weeks and get my yoga resume out to various teachers and studios and see what happens. Then on Tuesday I have another interview.

So fingers crossed for everything please :)

To be beside the seaside!

On Sunday we decided to get away from all things house moving and work related and we headed off to the south coast for the day. We ended up in Hastings (which is famous for a Battle that took place nearby in 1066) and had a lovely day just enjoying the sea air and each other's company away from the horrors of real life. I think we needed it more than we realised, we came home with a sense of reconnection to ourselves, to nature and to each other which was rather nice.

So we're now well into our penultimate week in this house. I'm madly applying for jobs in Cambridge and we're just generally plodding along to a point where we're ready to start packing. It's all very close now and neither of use can wait!

I'm not teaching tonight - instead the teacher who is taking over from me is teaching and I'm going to be practicing with the class, which will be weird but fun. Then next week is my last week of classes. Four more to go in fact! Eeek!

Going there to come back....

So, now that all my yoga clients know about this, I can finally post about it in my public blog!

Himself and I are upping tools and moving to Cambridge in September. We both tire of London Life, and crave a quieter, more restful pace. Plus Cambridge is where I grew up and it will be fantastic to be near my family again - I'm a real homebody, who has been away from home for too long.

Himself has a job that is totally transportable so we will be lucky enough to have a very good salary coming in from the off. Now all we have to do is find a house that will accept two very troublesome kitty cats!

=

I am, therefore, beginning to think about the fact that in less than two months I won't be living in this house, I will have sold my yoga business (I am so blessed to have found two lovely ladies to take over from me) and I will not be teaching yoga. Instead I will (hopefully) have a job back working as a PA (currently registering with agencies and applying for jobs etc), the career I left 18 month ago to teach yoga.

And you know what? All of that sits perfectly with me. I had to do it. I had to leave work and teach yoga full time so that I don't get to 50 and turn around and say "damn I wish I'd done that". I had to go there to come back.

I know teaching yoga will always be in my life. Come the new year I'll set up some pregnancy courses again on Saturday mornings. I'll do my Pilates training and my pregnancy Pilates trianing. Pilates and an anatomical viewpoint seem to be far more where my practice and my teaching are heading.

Everything will come to the place it is meant to be and I'm so excited :)

Hip Openers

I've been working on a lot of hip opening practices recently, both in my own practice and in my teaching. Most yoga asanas work on the hips and pelvis in one way or another, but by focusing particularly on hip opening practices we are, on a physical level specifically working into the mobility and strength of the hip joint.

It seems incredibly important to me to work this part of the body. The hips are the point in the body where the upper and lower parts meet, securing our spine to our legs and providing the beginnings of both the grounded feeling through our feet and the lifted feeling through our torso neck and head.

We all move the hips forward and back. It is called walking, most of us do it for long periods of time every single day. But how often to we use the full rotation of the hip? How often in daily life do we sit cross-legged or squat? And the reason most of us don't - because it's too difficult.

The hip joint is extremely solid - it has to be to hold us up, to provide that connection I was talking about before. This means that working through the hip joint is a slow process. We cannot force the joint - that will just cause knock-on damage to the knee; so we have to cultivate patience and a sense of inner awareness to slowly, slowly work through the tension towards release with compassion, without judgement, without comparison to others. Hip openes need to be practiced regularly, daily if possible and maybe, maybe you will one day be sitting in full lotus position (see picture)!

As any student of mine will tell you, my hips are notoriously stiff. I'm afraid sitting in full lotus is not for me in this lifetime. You see, our hips joints are set a certain way in their sockets. For some people this means hip opening practices will develop into half lotus at least, for others this means they have been able to sit in lotus since they were kids. But when bone meets bone in the socket you cannot stretch any further. If you try it will only twist into the knee.

Just because I know I will not sit in lotus does not mean I shouldn't bother with hip openers however. We carry and awful lot of tension it the hips and pelvis, and therefore a lot of unrealeased emotion. Slow and patient release is key. And a healthy hip joint will carry a healthy body!

Regularity and Simplicity

Regularity and Simplicity go hand in hand.

A long time ago, before I even contemplated training to be a yoga teacher I practice Astanga Vinyasa yoga. I longed to be able to practice 6 days a week as the tradition prescribed but the time it took to do full Primary made it almost impossible to fit into my daily routine (without getting up at 4.30am or something equally foolish!), so it turned out that apart from my bi-weekly Astanga classes, my mat stayed in it's funky mat bag!

Over the years, with my discovery of Viniyoga and Satyananda (both of which traditions I draw inspiration from) and especially my discovery and training in Yoga Therapy, and of course becoming a teacher myself, I began to find that the more simple you kept your practice, the more regular your practice would be. I know that my 30 minute practice every morning does me far more good than struggling on my mat for 2 hours and only managing it once a week.

Once I began my daily practice I noticed that other things in my life became routines as well. For example, I get up early every morning to do my yoga practice even though I don't really have to get up as early as I do, it just feels right these days. I have also found my life becoming more simple. I no longer crave the excitement I used to and am happy here at home with my belove and my kitties!

When I work with clients on a one-to-one basis I have two pieces of advice I give them for sticking to their self practice:-

1) Keep it Simple - Don't make hugely ambitious goals for yourself that you will never keep. Let's start with 20 minutes of yoga 2 or 3 times a week.

2) However simple the goal STICK WITH IT!!!! If you don't feel like getting on your mat just do it anyway. After a few weeks you'll just step on your mat regardless.

With more routine and regularity in my life, my life has become better. All my adventures these days begin on my mat!

Namaste

Yoga and Pilates

Since I got back from teaching on the retreat in Turkey last year I've been trying to work out where I'm going with my career. As some of you know, teaching a retreat in the sunshine on the beach had been the height of my ambition. After it happened, as early as the plane trip home I felt deflated and directionless.

I've carried on teaching, I've carried on reading, I've carried on going to yoga training days. Don't get me wrong, I love my job with a passion, I'm just looking for something else.

I had two directions. I could either go back into academia and write my PhD or I could pursue the health and fitness avenue.

I mulled it over, I drank a lot of cups of tea and then I realised that right now I'm not ready to face academia again. If one could write one's PhD without the politics of academia (and Cambridge University is like an Agatha Christie novel there is so much lying, gossiping and backbiting) it would be wonderful. But one can't.

So to cut a long story short I have decided to pursue the health and fitness route further. I am already a qualified yoga instructor and yoga therapist and Level 3 on the Register of Exercise Professionals, so the world is my oyster in terms of where I can go from here. Because I already teach and have my Anatomy and Physiology Diploma (which I'm going to do the Refresher for), I can branch out without having to do the hours and hours of supervised teaching and anatomy exams.

So I have decided to train to teach Pilates as well. Personally I think yoga and pilates work well together (not in the same class obviously, I mean from a teaching perspective). As my yoga practice and my teaching become slower, deeper, working on subtle energies, so I feel I need a more dynamic and anatomical challenge. It's also another string to my bow workwise/clientwise.

I will do the eight week intensive once we move to Cambridge next year. In the meantime I have to do at least 30 hours with a Pilates instructor.

Now, I did a lot of Pilates in the past, but haven't had a teacher for a couple of years since my old teacher went back to Australia. So I went to my first class with my new teacher yesterday. Oh My God I'd forgotten how hard Pilates is! I ache and ache!

But it's a new challenge, a new step on the career ladder, another step in getting my body back to full health and another step for Project Fitness.

Day 28 - Lesson Planning

When I first started to teach yoga I planned my lessons in the finest detail -- what we would do, how we would do it and exactly how long it would take.

Gradually over the years my lesson plans have become less and less detailed. I have learned that there are times when certain postures/sequences are out of the question depending on who is in the class and what the energy feels like. I have learned to gauge what my students want to do rather than what I want to teach and so I lean more and more towards the stance of making lessons up on the spot.

Obviously left completely to my own devices things could get chaotic so I always have a theme and a central posture that we will work up to and down from. Vinyasa krama - step by step.

For example, last week my theme was legs and hips, my central posture was parsvakonasana - working on the energy from heel to fingertip. I teach two general level classes a week (my other classes are specialist; therapy or pregnancy), and the way we worked up to and down from these postures was quite different in each class. The energy was high on Wednesday and I could tell that the class needed a strong practice. On Thursday, however, the energy was quite different and I needed to work on a more restorative flow into the central posture with longer in savasana at the end.

It used to drive me wild when the randomness of life meant I couldn't stick to my lessons plans, but over time I am beginning to cultivate the notion of flux. Just allowing myself to roll with whatever my students need. And with this knowledge I grow to love teaching more and more and more each day!