Meditation

Three years into yoga and I must shamefully admit to not having a meditation practice. During teacher training, we took time to meditate every day, but the habit didn't take root beyond what I was required to do.

I don't feel like a failure, or less of a yogi, for not meditating. Some people come to enlightenment - whatever that actually means - through the physical practice. And like all things, there is ebb and flow born of need and circumstance.

At the moment, I engage in a yin centered practice to regain mobility and strength following my illness. That's what I need right now. As a result, I probably am closer to what it means to meditate than I have ever been because yin sinks and settles and waits.

The Eco Yogini has a wonderful post on the types of meditation and her feelings about it. It's always good to know that meditation is something that takes time and needs to fit us just like our asana practice does.

My own meditation is unorthodox because I use music to "chant". The Gayatiri is my mantra of choice for the time being. I won't apologize for the slight cheat in this respect. It is my way in only, and it's simply a start that may take me somewhere or might amount to nothing much in the end. The readiness is all, as the decidedly non-yoga Hamlet once said. I am readying.

Yoga Needs to be Saved?

Yoga is apparently in grave danger of losing its core. The gooey center of enlightenment coated with flexibility frosting has been ... gasp ... sucked into the American obsession with money, ownership and power.

Yoga?

There's a point or two to be found in the purists arguments that yoga is veering off into an exercise industry. The "uniform" is label conscious and pricey. Studios jealously guard "their methodology" which they would patent if Bikram hadn't already tried to and failed.

Yoga's material trail is considerable and the path to practice is increasingly sold through teacher training programs that has lead to organizations ladling out "accreditation's" which in most parts of North America mean exactly squat in terms of state or provincial oversight. But it's making someone money. A lot or a little.

Westerners can't stand to not profit. Or so it seems.

But a few of the anointed yogini elite are now banded together in an effort to stop the "making a living off yoga" corruption - even as they are presumably doing just that.

Barbara Benagh, Patricia Walden, Natasha Rizopoulos, Justine Wiltshire Cohen, and Peentz Dubble, all of whom teach at Wiltshire's studio in Newtonville, MA, are planning to actively yank yoga back to its egalitarian roots.

They've created the Down Under Yoga website with their mission being the following:

We believe that yoga studios should act in ways that are consistent with the teachings of yoga. We will never sell plastic water bottles that go into landfill (because ahimsa means “do no harm”). We will never sell $150 yoga pants (because aparigraha means “identifying greed”). We will never accept offers from companies to promote their gear in exchange for free publicity or products (because satya means “truthfulness”). We will never brand, trademark, or pretend we’ve made up a new style of yoga because humility is the whole point.

Somewhat of a Marxist manifesto, yoga-style?

It is difficult not to agree with their worry. My last browse through Lululemon caused me again to wonder at the sense of paying hundreds of dollars for a basic start up: mat, bottom and top. And the subtle way the chain pushes the idea that "fatties" aren't allowed by capping their sizes at 12 (when the average North American woman is a size 14) seems very un-yoga.

There is also the sexing up of yoga from Yoga Journal's recent Toesox scandal to Tara Stiles' new book Slim, Sexy, Calm.

Perhaps then that brakes do need to be put on "the madness".

But what do you think? Is yoga at a tipping point in the West? Has it been infused with greed and boot camp fitness mentality to the point where its purpose has been lost?

Teaching My First Yoga Class

My "desk" at The Yoga Room

I started filling in at The Yoga Room before I finished my 200 hour teacher training. Mainly I covered the Drop-In class at noon, which was 45 minutes and based on the Ashtanga standing series. Nothing to brain twisting. If you know Primary, you to could lead the noon drop in.

The challenge was leading students through with instruction. Remembering to cue.

There are a lot of cues. Down Dog alone has two platforms and has cues from fingers to the soles of the feet and back again.

I taught the Hatha class when Jill was away on holiday in July but teaching is a work in progress. Which is funny because I am a teacher by trade and temperment.

For twenty years, I taught English and its variant courses in middle and high school. I was good at it, which means something in a profession where it is easier to be mediorce than not.

I like planning classes. I love executing plans.

But yoga reminds me - so far - that I learned to teach as much as I was born to do it.

I'm sure that doesn't make sense to many, but I believe that the essential qualities of a teacher are gifted by the cosmic forces and it's up to the individual to hone and perfect them. All the natural ability in the world will not make you good teacher let alone a great one.

Five years into my teaching career was about the point where I could claim competency beyond the average teacher and at ten years - I made it look like magic.

My classes in the fall sessions are Hatha Flow and Restorative. This morning was Flow and I used a sequence I cribbed from the Yoga Works teacher training manual. Tweeked it a tad at the beginning and end, had to dump a few postures to allow for the full ten minutes of Savasana at the end (never scrimp here, I was told) but it seemed to go well. Had more "flow" than the first time I used it when I was subbing a Hatha class.

I am still working on pace. Pace is key. Finding the outer limit of a class's endurance, adequate reminders about the breath and able to teach a pose without getting lost.

Wanting to "teach" the poses and still moving the class along is work. I haven't found my sweet spot or even anything close, but it's not the painful stutter that it was the first few times I stood up in front of a group to teach - this is something. In fact, this is good.

Restorative is up for Monday and I am writing my sequence using Kristen Rentz's Yoga Nap. A relaxation course at the Glenrose Cardiac Rehab in Edmonton, which I attended Friday, reminded me about the breath - specifically breathing exercises. Restorative's prime directive is teaching the body to relax, which is not something people generally think they need to learn to do, so a few simple breathing exercises might be a good way to start a class. Set a tone.

I've missed all this planning and research that goes along with teaching much more than I realized it seems. It is good to put my teacher hat back on.