Awakening the happiness of the self revealed

Love you followers!

Also, I’m JUST realizing now that I have over 600 followers. I love you guys. You’re all the best! Many thanks for sticking around with me for all this time <3 Namaste!

That question teachers always ask to new students

I had a discussion with one of my yoga teacher friends the other night about how most teachers ask at the beginning of class to new students if they have anything going on with their body physically or mentally that the teacher should know about. For anyone brand, spanking new to yoga, this may sound like an invasive, personal question, but all we teachers are wanting to know is if you’ve had any injuries, surgeries, illnesses, or what not that could affect your practice. Someone who’s had a recent hip replacement could be putting him or herself in more danger if the class is all about hip opening. Or someone with chronic shoulder pain and issue should be doing a modified version sun salutation. Anyhow, so my friend was telling me how she had this new student who said she had no issues at all and proceeded to do the class. Then three weeks or so later at class, brought up how this and that was aching and brought up the fact she had a hip replacement so many months ago. My friend’s gut reaction ( and mine, too ) was to say, “You should have told me and I would have been more thoughtful with our practice!” And she felt really bad for not knowing and knew she would have giving this person alternatives to the poses they were doing.

I can see both sides of the argument. I can understand people not wanting to tell because they’re not comfortable. Hell, for the longest time I didn’t feel comfortable telling people in general, let alone yoga teachers, that I deal with mental illness. Well, not that I know many teachers who would know how to deal with that, but still. But I think of things I deal with physically ( tight shoulders and anemia ) and that influences my practice. I’ll let teachers know, mostly because I make modifications for myself and so they don’t wonder, “Why is she not doing what we’re doing?”

But not everyone has a regular yoga practice on their own and may not be in tune with their bodies and need yoga teachers to guide them. It’s our responsibility as yoga teachers to not only be aware of this information, but also know how to address it. We ask this to know how to help people and make it a pleasant experience. I don’t want people being uncomfortable or even injured in my class, so this helps me out. I think of it like telling your doctor what’s going on during a check up. You don’t skimp out on information when they need to know to help out. If you can’t say something, then how are yoga teachers suppose to know in order to help? Now, we teachers don’t need your life story and your family’s background health, but still. I think the point I was trying to make is in there somewhere.

So don’t be afraid to let your yoga teachers know! We don’t bite! And it may seem scary and so forth, but it will help you as a student in the long run along with us as teachers. And for my fellow teachers out there, make the whole asking part as painless as possible. I like sitting down with my students and making the whole exchange very causal and easy, like we’re talking over coffee instead of stiff and impersonal. I joke around when people tell me they have “nothing wrong” that they must have lived in a bubble their whole lives and I’m jealous of them. Whatever works, but we shouldn’t live in that fear, either as a teacher or student. There’s freedom found in speaking up and I think that’s beautiful.