Finding a Guinea Pig

Wow.  I should be ashamed of myself for telling people I write a blog.  While I really need to work on posting more regularly, I also have to cut myself some slack because I have been up to all things "Yoga", from doing my reading assignments, attending classes, writing papers, and thinking about blogging.  Things do inspire me, but sometimes when it comes down to sitting and blogging about it, it's hard to get to it.  You know, inspiration often strikes at times when it is inconvenient to blog.

Yesterday, as part of the teacher training program, we had one of our monthly, intensive 6-hour classes. I was so happy to be there, but there's a LOT of information that gets disseminated to you in 6 hours, and it takes a bit to process.  We had a 2 1/2 hour session on History and Philosophy, and while the texts are a lot to digest, I'm excited about an assignment coming up in a few short weeks where we need to intensively study the Yamas and Niyamas.  There are 10 of them, and each week we will be bringing our awareness to one of the principles, attempting to observe them in our interactions and reflect on how we react to that.  I am willing to bet there will be plenty of material to blog about!

The rest of our class was devoted to teaching postures.  We talked in our large group about the instruction necessary to get our students into the postures; what wording is effective, how to enter the posture, how to ensure proper alignment in the posture, and how to exit the posture.  We talked about what postures might work before and what postures might work after.  There's a lot to mix and match, as I'm sure you can imagine!  Then, we broke out into small groups where we taught one another short sequences.

Just a few weeks ago, this "instructing" was a totally overwhelming thing to do, but now we are starting to become a little more comfortable with directing a person into a posture.  The only problem is that the people we are instructing are yogis.  Not only are they yogis, they are people who have near-perfect alignment.  They are gals who do yoga allthetime.  Many have been doing yoga for years.  They don't really "need" the instruction.  You can just say "Down Dog", and they know what to do, self-correcting, making adjustments until the form is perfect while you just stand there and watch.

No, what we need are Guinea Pigs - and Betsy told us so:  "Go out there and find yourself a guinea pig".  We need to find people who do NOT do yoga on a regular basis, people who might not have an extensive background in practice,  so we are forced to find the words that will guide someone properly into alignment.  So where do you find a Guinea Pig?  I started out several weeks ago, actually, trying this with my husband in our family room.  Let's just say that it ended poorly.  I said "tuck your toes", and he said "What?  I don't know what you're saying!" and I said, "Tuck your toes.  How can you not know how to tuck your toes?", and he said some more stuff, and I yelled said some other stuff, and, well, you can only imagine how bad it was.  Now what?

Luckily, I am not so easily deterred.  Even more fortuitous is that my husband is rather forgiving and willing to give it another go.  I wrote out a short 20 minute practice (incorporating some of the postures we've been working on in teacher training), and tonight he was my student.  I had a proper warm-up, some standing postures, a cool down, and a Savasana.  At the end, he said he felt relaxed!  I couldn't believe it!  I actually was able to relax my tense, "annoyed" (he writes his OWN blog about stuff that annoys him.  Which is pretty much everything.  I would give you a link, but a.) you probably do something that annoys him and he's already blogged about it; and b.) his blog gets way more traffic than my blog does, so I don't need to send my readers his way; c.) you might like his blog better and stop reading mine, especially since he posts more than once a month; and d.) he drops the f-bomb a LOT) Husband!!

Have I found my guinea pig?  While this was a much better start, I think I must continue my search.  I should add to my flock herd (I looked that up, a group of guinea pigs really is called a herd!) of willing participants
while I hone and refine my teaching skill.  Look out.
Just for now, allow a wave of breath to enliven your experience... Drink in the possibility of being who and what you really are - Danna Faulds