If I ever had any doubt about whether I’d really want to teach yoga, it must have been brought on by a momentary lapse of insanity. This week, I got my first hands-on experience with real yoga students, and it was much more amazing than I ever thought it would be.

I’ve been observing a class for a little more than a month now and taking notes on the sequences, how my teacher, Charu Rachlis, handles certain situations in class, and how she approaches students to give adjustments. This has been an invaluable experience because there are so many things that happen in a yoga class that you miss while you’re in Downward-Facing Dog (or any other pose for that matter).

As much as I’ve learned from observing, I was excited to assist. Even though I’ve never been a touchy-feely sort of person (especially when those I’m touching are sweaty), I wanted to have the experience of working with actual students.

Now that I’ve had my first experience, I can tell you that adjusting people with years of yoga training (my fellow teacher trainees) is no substitute for working with people who only come to a yoga class once a week. It’s like night and day.

For example, if I give one of my peers a clear-as-mud cue like, “Bring your leg parallel to the floor,” when I mean “perpendicular,” my peers would ignore my faulty instruction and do the pose as they know it. On the other hand, someone less experienced might actually listen to me, which is as scary as it is frustrating.

So it was good training to work with actual students under the watchful eye of an experienced teacher—especially since my teacher took the time to teach me how to do certain adjustments while she taught her class.

I learned even more from the students themselves—even though they were a little sweaty.

As many of you may know, I’ve been studying the body though a variety of measures for the entirety of my training. I’ve studied anatomy books, felt my classmates’ muscles, and even endured a trip to a cadaver lab. For some reason, though, putting my hands on students, feeling their muscles relax, and watching their breathing patterns made all of it click.

Being in such close proximity made it really easy for me to know how much pressure to apply giving manual adjustments, but it also became very easy for me to see the differences in people’s bodies. For the first time, I was able to actually look at someone in a pose and see where he or she was tighter or more open.

Perhaps the most “touching” part of the experience (pardon the pun), was how warmly the students welcomed me. It was certainly a different energy than I’m used to in a yoga class. People seemed to be genuinely grateful for my help, and were completely understanding when I wasn’t quite sure what to do next. All this, and I didn’t even have to touch a foot!

Posted by Erica Rodefer at 05:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

My teachers keep telling me it’s inevitable. I have to go through a stage where I forget what I’m trying to teach, wade through awkward silences, say “left” when I mean “right,” and make a complete fool of myself most of the times I open my mouth. To make matters worse, there aren’t even any asanas I can do to make my symptoms less severe.

“You just have to practice so you can get past that first stage of awkwardness,” Christopher Love says. “Eventually you will develop your own way of saying things.”

This week, Stephanie Snyder led us in a class called “Finding Your Own Voice.” For a brief moment I thought I had found mine, but it got lost in a sea of self-doubt and nervous energy when I got in front of just three of my peers to teach for 30 minutes.

It was by far the longest 30 minutes of my life. Not only did I not know how to instruct my three unfortunate pupils from one pose to the next, but there were a few occasions when my mind went completely blank and I couldn’t think of a single pose to bring them into. I wanted to stop and take a nice long, reassuring Child’s Pose. Sadly, that’s not an option for the teacher.

I hope I’ll look back on that moment in a few years and marvel at how far I’ve come.
Until then, I’m going to keep reminding myself that teaching is very much like my asana practice—if I can just breath, soften, and be patient, my true voice will emerge.

Stephanie shared a few tips on keeping our cues dynamic and clear, and our love for teaching fresh and sincere:

• Use complete sentences.
• Avoid using slang.
• Watch for repetitive words.
• Be specific with your feedback.
• Don’t say: “We’re gonna ...,” “See if you can ...,” or “Try to ...” Ask students to experience your cues, instead. “Feel for the shoulder blade sliding down the back.”
• Speak slowly, clearly, and truthfully.
• Remember to keep your hands and body language open.
• Teach what serves the students, even if that’s something different from what you had planned.
• Stay connected with your own practice.

Posted by Erica Rodefer at 07:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I have two older sisters. Both have birthed their first baby in the last year. So while they were going through this amazing transition in their lives, I learned way more than I wanted to about pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding, thank you very much.

After the horror stories about morning sickness and compressed bladders, I wasn’t expecting a lot of surprises in my class about yoga and pregnancy. I wasn’t terribly shocked by the images of a fetus growing in the womb. I didn’t want to run and hide when we talked about mucus plugs or the importance of strong kegel muscles. Time and time again, during my sisters’ pregnancies I had to remind myself that if it grosses me out this much, it must be pretty terrifying for them.

So when my sister said, “I just want to have this baby, NOW!” It probably wasn’t very helpful for me to say, “Are you sure? I hear birthing a child hurts.” Things went much more smoothly when I listened and asked questions about how it all was progressing: “How much does the baby weigh now? Exactly how does a contraction feel? Doesn’t it hurt the baby when you poke at your stomach like that?”

Once you get past the unpleasantries that go along with it, you realize pregnancy is just a process that, if all goes well, results in a precious new life—like my new nieces, Abby (nine months old) and Rosemary (four months old).

As a teacher, I may encounter a pregnant student in my classes at any time, so I have to be aware of the changes that are happening with her body and know how to accommodate those changes. More than likely, though, it will be a learning experience for me. (If most pregnant women are like my sisters were, I’m sure they’ll be able to tell me much more about what they should and should not do than I’d ever be able to tell them.)

Jane Austin, who aside from being a prominent San Francisco pre- and postnatal yoga teacher is also a midwife, reaffirmed my experience that one of the most important things you can give a mother-to-be is encouragement to listen to her own intuition about what is right for her body.

This is also important after the baby is born and a mother starts coming back to your class after her maternity leave.

Everyone is praising her, telling her how fabulous she is for jumping back into things, Jane said. But what she might really need is the permission to rest. A mother’s body goes through an intense and amazing process during pregnancy and birth, she needs to take it easy for at least four weeks after a natural birth and six to eight weeks after a C-section. Ouch!

Eventually, though, she’ll be able to do all the poses she could do before her pregnancy, but it will take time and will be different. Her body will be as strong and capable as it was before, but it will be changed forever. You never have the same body two days in a row so it’s ridiculous for a new mother to expect to have the body she did, pre-pregnancy.

“I have strong abs,” said Jane, a mother of two, “Do I have a little extra skin? Yes. But is it worth it? Absolutely!”

Posted by Erica Rodefer at 07:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’m a little more than halfway through my training now, so I feel like I’m qualified to give a few tips to those of you who are thinking about enrolling in your first yoga teacher training program. (We had the weekend off from training for Memorial Day, so I was able to refresh and refocus!)

Here is a list of lessons learned so far:

1. If you think it will be a piece of cake, think again! If you’re in a good program, you will be doing a lot more than showing up to class and taking notes. There are lots of books. There are written assignments. You have to find a mentor teacher and assist in his/her classes. There is a final examination to measure your knowledge.

2. Don’t expect it to be like your weekly asana class. Asana might not be the focus, even when the subject is teaching asanas. It is important that teachers understand doing a posture in their own bodies, but likely you won’t have a lot of time to explore that during your training. There’s way too much material to cover. Instead expect a lot of discussion about injuries, anatomical structure, and teaching techniques in each and every class.

3. Don’t expect desks and chairs. And, for crying out loud, don’t be afraid to use lots of blankets, bolsters, and blocks to make yourself as comfortable as possible! No one will fault you.

4. Choose a program that will allow you to get acquainted with different styles of yoga. Even though you may think you know all there is to know about how styles other than your own vary—there is always something new to learn. Some of the folks in my class who went into the training expecting to teach a certain style or demographic are leaning in another direction now. (I’m one of them! I thought I’d want to focus on vinyasa flow classes, but am now realizing the importance of slower, more alignment-focused styles.) There’s always time for more training later. Remember, it’s experience that really helps mold a teacher’s style—not teacher training.

5. Don’t dismiss teachers just because you might not feel drawn to his or her personality. My training is set up so that we get instruction with several different teachers, and I have to admit, I wasn’t immediately thrilled with the way some of them approached their classes. When I let go of my first impressions, though, I realized I could learn a lot—even if I wasn’t in love with the teacher.

6. Make friends with your classmates! Bounce ideas off of each other. Ask questions. Give advice. Sometimes just talking about yoga with someone who understands what you’re doing will make you feel so much better about the whole process.

7. It seems like there is a lot of misconception around what a yoga teacher training program means. With yoga, your training will never be complete. It’s a life-long study, and just because you have a teaching certificate doesn’t mean you should stop being a student. For me, I think it will be the true beginning of my study.

Posted by Erica Rodefer at 10:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)