Open Circle Yoga, St Andrews Church Hall, Wednesday 12pm-1pm =OFF=
Purebalance Yoga, Plimmerton, Sautday, 9am-10:15am =ON=
Open Circle Yoga, Ngaio Town Hall, Sunday 1:30pm-2:25pm =ON=

Hey lovely peeps. There is NO YOGA this Wednesday as there is a quaterly blood collection at the Chruch Hall.

I'm very confident a number of people will show up for the class anyway and I will be reminding those people about the wisdom of checking this blogspot before coming to class in the future :-)

The new class at Ngaio Town Hall is slowly starting to establish itself with a small group of people I could just about start to call regulars. The numbers are big enough to make me feel the class is worth running, and my hope is that with a low attrition rate and a slow trickle of new people joining, the class will slowly grow and continue to establish itself.

Sundays class had a unique moment when right at the end, a stream of light came blasting through one of the high windows covering my body and face in blinding light, in a hall otherwise shrouded in darkness. God, were you sending me a sign?!?

Namaste
b

Wellington Yoga Classes 23/07/2012 - 29/07/2012

Open Circle Yoga, St Andrews Church Hall, Wednesday 12pm-1pm =ON=
Purebalance Yoga, Plimmerton, Sautday, 9am-10:15am =ON=
Open Circle Yoga, Ngaio Town Hall, Sunday 1:30pm-2:25pm =ON=

Wellington Yoga Classes 16/07/2012 - 22/07/2012

Open Circle Yoga, St Andrews Church Hall, Wednesday 12pm-1pm =ON=
Purebalance Yoga, Plimmerton, Saturday, 9am-10:15am =ON=
Open Circle Yoga, Ngaio Town Hall, Sunday 1:30pm-2:25pm =ON=



During the weekend I actually got of my metaphorical ass and constructed some basic flyers to advertise my Open Circle Yoga classes. Stuck one on the Ngaio Hall Notice Board and gave the rest to Carolyn Patchel to stick up and hand out via her already established network.


This really is the first time I've made a legitimate effort to market my classes and for that reason alone it is worth taking a moment to recognise this as a significant event in my life as a Yoga Teacher. I have no idea if this will offer any assistance to attracting members, but I reckon if it brings even a single person to the classes it was worth it. 


In the end, I feel that via word of mouth a slow and evolutionary growth of the class is the path that I hope; expect and believe will occur, and I'm genuinely willing (and able) to give it the time an expectation like that needs to prove itself.


In a way, the growth of a new class feels very similar to the development of ones own practice. It evolves organically, and is best if built on strong foundations.


Namaste all!
b

Wellington Yoga Classes 09/07/2012 - 15/07/2012

Open Circle Yoga, St Andrews Church Hall, Wednesday 12pm-1pm =ON=
Purebalance Yoga, Plimmerton, Sautday, 9am-10:15am =ON=
Open Circle Yoga, Ngaio Town Hall, Sunday 1:30pm-2:25pm =ON=


I have had a challenging few weeks, but today I will mention how rewarding my own practice has been lately.

My body has been going through a sort of "negative/retreat" phase over the last several months, but I have been very dedicated with my practice and continued to believe it would start moving back in the other direction and I'm happy to say it has. My last two morning practices have been pure Joy. Don't ever question whether you will be rewarded for persistance and self-belief. Sooner or later it comes through for you.

Wellington Yoga Classes 02/07/2012 - 08/07/2012

Open Circle Yoga, St Andrews Church Hall, Wednesday 12pm-1pm =ON=

Purebalance Yoga, Plimmerton, Sautday, 9am-10:15am =ON=

Open Circle Yoga, Ngaio Town Hall, Sunday 1:30pm-2:25pm =ON=

Hi all. well I'll admit that while my new class was very well supported at the start, it has quickly dropped off, but this was totally to be expected. My view is that it will now slowly start to build up again, but I do need to let people in the Ngaio community know the class exists (strangely enough). It is an interesting experience being the so called "owner" of a new class, and being totally responsible for either it's success or failure.

As a very dedicated practitioner of Yoga (well, something I call Yoga anyway) one assumes a natural progression into being a teacher. Although I actually love teaching, and would find it hard to imagine doing Yoga without teaching being a part of it, I very much see it as a branch of my practice rather than the trunk.

The hardest part about being a teacher is the fact that you put yourself out there for the evaluation and judgement of others, yet that is not why I chose to do yoga. Ironically, I chose to do it for the very reason I was not subject to anyone elses opinion (other than my own). I remember doing the Yoga Performance I called "Equipoise" (funnily enough a well known body-builder did a double take when I told him the name as Equipoise is also the name of a certain performance enhancing substance). When I accepted the challenge to create a routine I decided it would be 100% true to the nature of my practice, not just as a final product but also in the way I created it. This means I did not seek input from anyone else, I just followed my intuition. I chose the music; I developed the choreography; I decided how and when I would train. I took some time to understand and accept what I had committed to, and then I used Yogic principles to guide everything that led me up to the moment I stepped on stage and did my yogic dance. When that time came, I did not really care what anyone else thought, because I was happy with it, and everything I'd done to create it, and that was all that really mattered.

For me, teaching is the same. I understand there are marketing realities to being a teacher. You need to let people know you are there and what you are doing, but I guess that if teaching is a branch of my practice, then marketing of the classes is yet another branch that comes off of the teaching one. These things are all a necessary part of growing within the environment and society within which we live, and they all have their place. The fact that I have no real financial pressure to teach is an interesting place to be. The motivation to grow the "marketing branch" of my Yoga tree is not very strong, but I do want to see the class succeed, if only for the simple reason I believe so much in what I'm doing.

In the end, my inner truth is that these branches can be cut off, or simply die when their time has come, it is the trunk that needs to survive, in order for new branches to grow.

Whether the new class becomes established or not, will be 100% my responsibility, but it ultimately will have no impact on my practice or commitment to My Yoga, and I only say this, because this knowledge is the greatest source of my strength: What I share is not the same thing as what I am. What I am is a Yogi.

I am aware of the saying "You are what you repeatedly do" so maybe yes, maybe I am more than my trunk, I am my branches too, but branches back :-)

Wellington Yoga Classes 25/06 - 01/07

Open Circle Yoga, St Andrews Church Hall, Wednesday 12pm-1pm =ON=

Purebalance Yoga, Plimmerton, Sautday, 9am-10:15am =ON=

Open Circle Yoga, Ngaio Town Hall, Sunday 1:30pm-2:25pm =ON=

My new class at Ngaio is being well supported by Zumba practitioners, but I realise I probably need to also market this class to the general public, rather than rely only on a subset of people who are keen to do both Zumba and Yoga. My first method for this will be to advertise my Open Circle classes on the Yoga Lunchbox. Stay tuned :-)

Yoga: animal vegetable or mineral?!?

I do remember in the very early days when I started doing formal Yoga classes there was a level of intrigue and mystique about the teachers themselves.

For one thing they possessed a sense of ease and presence in their own bodies which I immediately coveted. Due to the very nature of the Yoga practice this seemed to be directly related to flexibility, so I very quickly became quite obsessed with the idea that in order to gain what they had, I needed to work very hard to loosen up my (by comparison) impossibly tight body.

Further more, they also appeared to know something about life that I did not. The way  they viewed life and the way they lived it seemed so at peace, yet at the same time strangely out of reach. I came to wonder, after a while, that maybe my personality did not really give me access to this type of existence, but that thought alone did nothing to diminish my desire to work very hard at mastering the physical postures, even though that goal seemed every bit as out of reach as the goal to seek a deeper understanding of their apparently enlightened mental and spiritual state.

The actual style of Yoga I was doing at that time had a strong bhakti/devotional emphasis, which in hindsight definitely presented a challenge for me given the type of person I am. At this stage in my Yoga Journey I feel quite strongly that there are many paths towards "self realisation" and the key to doing Yoga effectively is finding the path that most suits who you are and where you are -but neither of these statements are trivial or easy to put a place-marker on. Often it is the very fact that we don't know who/where we are that we would chose to do Yoga in the first place.

So this mystique of the teachers, I would have to say that to a certain degree it was a projection of my own limited perception as much as it was a true representation of the teachers themselves. I think when you are at a place in your life where you are really looking for answers those who appear not to suffer that same apparent yearning, by implication do not lack that very thing for which you are searching. You therefore see these people in a light that makes them very desirable, both as a role model and as someone you want to learn from.

How exactly I went from being the person I was then to the person I am now had it's moment of fundamental transition when more of my focus and energy started going into the process, and less into the teachers and personalities who shared them with me. After I left my first style of Yoga, feeling quite unsatisfied yet still deeply intrigued and inspired, I found another teacher who taught a style of Yoga that resonated much more deeply. However due to the actual practice itself being the main attraction, when I moved on from this teacher I did not loose the Yoga, for that was something I was already starting to make my own.

Since that time I've had many different teachers, either for very short or longer periods, but it was always the process, not the teacher who mattered most. As I am now a teacher myself I have an acute desire to honour my own belief system about what it means to be a Yoga teacher: To be as transparent yet as effective as possible in delivering the process, without ever being confused as being the process (i.e. the Yoga). Therefore I see Yoga primarily as a large array of processes, each with a fundamental philosophy underlying them, yet ultimately (and perhaps idealistically) all leading to the same place.

The funny thing is what inspired me to write this article is the recent end of a friendship with another Yoga Teacher. Far from being mystics, For some time I have appreciated more than ever that we are just human like everyone else. When I look back at those god-like teachers (as I saw them in the early days) I now realise they never existed. They no doubt had to make the same painful decisions I (and everyone else) has to make all throughout our lives: A choice that has no right or wrong answer. Only a choice made and a choice not made. More than ever the word "Yoga" comes to have less and less usefulness to me yet at the same time feels like a word I feel I understand better than I ever have before.

I know I won't ever be that enlightened teacher I imagined I saw when I first started Yoga, but I don't feel a sense of disappointment or failure about that. I think I am becoming something more real. I know I am vastly different from the person I was when I started, so transformation has most certainly been taking place. But I know I will always be human: I know I will make mistakes and will sometimes be cruel and selfish. Sometimes I will be a coward when I should and could have been brave. But mostly, I realise that the process of Yoga has served me better than I could ever have imagined, and that I'm a better person today than I was yesterday, and that as long as I stick with the process I will be an even better person tomorrow.