Namaste all
I am excited to confirm that I will be teaching a Monday lunchtime class at
Melissa Billington's Myoga Studio at the Powa Centre, starting the 21st of this
month.
Myoga Class
Timetable
The idea of teaching at a Yoga Studio is something that has intrigued and
perplexed me for a long time. As my own teaching style cannot be easily
categorised into any of the recognisable yoga modalities the main barrier has
always been a genuine concern on my part that I may be a round peg trying to
fit into a square hole.
As my own Yoga practice has, for a long time been defined by my
unwillingness to be bridled by the tenets (for want of a better expression) of
a specific style of Yoga I did not feel any synergy with the idea of teaching
at a studio that has already defined it's own identity.
What did that leave me with? Answering this question properly is going to be
a real journey:
I started out my teaching career with a thing called Bodybalance. A modern fusion
of Yoga; Pilates and Tai Chi set to contemporary music. This was a gym based
class and it had a very specific formula in the way it was taught. For
starters, it inherited a method of teaching by example that came from other
more traditional group-fitness classes, such as Step. It followed a very
structured blue-print of ordered "tracks" where a track is defined by
a specific piece of music and choreography. From memory it would be ordered as:
Warm-up; Sun Salutations; Standing Poses; Balance Poses; Core; Hamstrings;
Hips/Twists; Relaxation.
Each track was tightly choreographed to the music, I learned the
value of "counting the beat" when teaching this class in order to
know when to transition to new positions/postures. This was actually quite
challenging for me as it demanded the sort of qualities you might more readily
expect from a dancer. There were quite strict rules about how to queue, as
verbal communication was regarded as a key factor in becoming an effective
teacher. Staying tight with the music; communicating well with your class and
demonstrating good (or accepted) technique were all skills that needed to be
merged together and played out concurrently. The ratio of female to male
teachers was very high, and there is no doubt a big reason for that is that men
struggle more with the sort of multi-tasking qualities needed to pull this off.
The truth is, being a Bodybalance teacher was (and is) quite a talent. It takes
a lot of work and you most definitely need certain inherent skills (such as a
basic sense of timing and musicality) in order to be a good teacher. It was a
tremendous learning curve for me and at the same time helped (at least
partially) address an area of great challenge in my life: A serious lack of
self-confidence topped off with a good helping of low self-esteem.
It was the beginning of a journey into self-belief and purpose, and one that had to be
backed up by hard work to bring it all together.
There were some scary memories from my days teaching Bodybalance. Moments
when I forgot the choreography and went off on a momentary creative tangent of
my own design. It didn't happen often, and if nothing else the simple fear of
forgetting was enough to push you to practice the tracks over and over until it
really felt like it was drilled into your sub-conscious. I need to credit
Bodybalance for allowing me to craft a strong set of basic teaching skills
which I've carried with me to this very day. Even more than that, it has
influenced quite significantly my teaching style, which to be honest,
proved to be another nail in the coffin in terms of putting me at odds with
more traditional Yoga teaching methods.
Eventually, my reasons for leaving this system were that I needed to grow.
Perhaps if I were to be honest it was also a case of feeling like I was a small
cog in a very big wheel and I was never going to go anywhere beyond the place I
was already at. The structure of this class began to feel very limiting to me
and I wanted to explore other ways of teaching. The only choice was to become a
Yoga teacher and I needed that feedom.
Initially I did that without seeking a formal qualification.
Instead my training and experience in Bodybalance coupled with my own very dedicated asana practice
formed the basis of my classes. When I did seek teacher training it came in
the form of Erich Schiffmann who coins the phrase "freedom yoga". His
approach is to be inwardly guided and to connect and trust your own innate
wisdom. It was in perfect sync with my own philosophy and to this day I don't
think I could have picked a better person to seek a qualification from. At the
end of the day I don't really think a paper document means you are either a
good teacher or a bad teacher, but it does mean you cared enough to make the
effort. In reality, who I am as a teacher has little to do with my teacher
training, it is mostly a product of my own evolving practice and philosophy.
The method of teaching in front of the class, as it so happens works very
well for what I want to offer:
1) Non interference
Hands on adjustments are not something I am inherently against and this is
not a question as to which way is right or wrong. Touch is a form of
communication and connection with others. There are dangers though. I have been
injured by teachers who became quite ambitious on my behalf and pushed me too
far into a pose. In the context of Teacher/Student, there is a balance of power
heavily tilted towards the teacher. Both people are playing a role. However the
role I choose to play is not that of a traditional teacher. I am not trying to
create a vision for my students to aspire to. I wish to be a facilitator of a
very abstract concept: to help the participant connect to their own evolving
inner truth, body mind and spirit. To adjust a student I am therefore doing two
things in conflict with my objectives: (a) Inflicting my vision upon them (b)
Externalising their experience. I realise a new student needs guidance, but for me I limit that to keeping them safe and following basic alignment rules with which to wrapper their experience and growing conciousness around.
I'm working on a very basic premise here: That I am not the true teacher of
the self. That is you. That is where I found my own truest teacher and it is what I want for my students as well.
2) Flow
I do not see Yoga asana as a discrete set of poses. I see the whole class as
one pose connected by a thread of alternating breath and continuous movement. The
truth is I often hold poses when I'm teaching a class, but just because the
external movement has stopped, the internal movement, the breath, the flow of
energy; thought and emotion still continue to occur. Pacing is a very relevant
part of what I do, and there is no better way to be a facilitator of timeless
flow than when you are experiencing it yourself first hand. I know there are systems
of Yoga that prohibit the teacher from doing any of the poses in the class, and
again I don't argue against the reasons for this approach. I will say I have
been to many such classes where the combination with this and making student
adjustments, the rest of the class is left to fry in a challenging posture for
what can seem like a small eternity. Far from bliss it becomes a sort of torturous
hell where you see if your will is strong enough to outlast the teachers
absenteeism from the rest of the class. Often, when the teacher realises they
have lost their sense of flow they will then rush the next side, which in my
view only amplifies the imbalance. This is one aspect of Yoga where I feel closer to Ashtanga, as it becomes more about the student and the flow, than it is the teacher.
One of my students very recently came to me after class and told me she felt
like the whole class felt like a dance. Her comment made me smile for the rest
of the day. I don't want my Yoga peeps to feel they have done a set of individual yoga postures, I want them to feel like they have experienced a holistic asana practice.
3) Creative Evolution
Before teaching a class I have an idea of what the theme will be, but being
in the moment, being in each pose, I am often guided to allow the Asana flow
and connections to alter and evolve from their more regular patterns. For this
reason no two classes are ever completely identical. At times very similar,
yes, but sometimes a little different or sometimes a lot. Very cool things can
happen that I could not have predicted because one moment suggests the next and
you cannot circumvent that process. You have to let it happen and trust each
moment to guide you to the next. This is not about random-yoga. I call on my
own experience to use the building blocks and connect them in a way such that
the sum is always far greater than the parts, perhaps even transcending them
altogether. Certainly there have been some classes that went so well that I
find myself feeling sadness in the knowledge that if I were to ever try and
recreate it, it would only slip further away, but that is the nature of how I teach
So having said all of that, I found my home as a teacher at Gyms or
independently at community halls. For the last 2 years I taught at a studio
called Purebalance. It was a good fit because the owner did not teach Yoga but
a contemporary blend and she was very open to my approach. Myoga is in some
ways a brave step for me as I come closer to an established system that more
deeply honours many of the traditional mechanisms we associate with Yoga. The
truth is owning your own Yoga studio in a country as small as New Zealand can
be a challenge financially. I have always liked what this studio represents and
it has been reflected in the broad range of events Melissa has allowed to occur
at her venue. One of the reasons I'm going to teach there is Karmic: I
genuinely want to support and help Myoga grow from strength to strength. Another reason is that
it feels like a great next step for me, to be closer to a traditional Yoga
audience and share what I do with them. It feels like it is time and that I am
ready: I have a much deeper sense of peace and understanding in what I do
and what I offer, and of course what I get back from it.
The business model is slightly unusual. Members of Melissa's studio get to
come to my class for free, as it is covered in their membership plan. Existing
and new people to my Open Circle classes can use or purchase my existing
concession cards and will effectively have access to both this class and my
Wednesday lunchtime class at St Andrews. I am committed to giving this class
time to grow roots and become strong, but like my class content, I am open to
see how it evolves, and each moment will lead to the next. Hope to see you
there.
Myoga Address
Peace
b
