One of my previous yoga teachers wore head to toe white and wafted into the room sweeping with her an air of gravitas, a seriousness normally reserved for very holy people!
I’ve never considered I could be that kind of yoga teacher, but in the past couple of weeks I’ve feared that rather bringing a little yoga magic to the room I’ve just swept in a whole load of plaster dust!
However, feedback from all Easter workshops and classes has been great and I’ve certainly enjoyed hosting events at both ends of my teaching range with some joyful vinyasa in the mix too.
First up was a packed “Yoga Fundamentals for Everyone” workshop. Condensing essential yoga skills into two hours was a “tall-order” and making it relevant to a varied audience was also a challenge, but the evening flew by and even my more experienced students told me they’d found the session useful.
Altogether more nerve-wracking was my “Yoga for Sport – Back Care” workshop. Living with someone who suffers periodic episodes of debilitating back pain does make me nervous about working with people who suffer this way. However, with sports men and women, back ache can be triggered by tightness and muscular imbalances in the legs and hips (particularly the hip flexors and external rotators). So I felt more confident offering a back care workshop to an athletic population. There was a small group of twelve students with a range of severity – from minor and occasional niggles to those with chronic issues. However, common to just about everyone was reduced range of movement typically caused by muscular tension and so feedback was especially positive for this workshop (much to my relief).
My final workshop was an opportunity for me to share my fundamental belief that we are all our own very best teacher and offer some guidance on how to tap into our innate wisdom through our yoga practise. I introduced some key yoga philosophies and we also put the Yoga Tristana method into practise using the first half of the Ashtanga Primary Series. But, what made this workshop particularly special was the wise women who came along – willing to share their insights, bring laughter and participate whole-heartedly.
In between workshops I hosted a couple of special Soul-shining events. I absolutely love working to music but, whilst I only occasionally get asked to “turn it down”, I am acutely aware that musical tastes vary A LOT so I often agonise over playlists and edit out anything that might be too “polarising”. However Soul-shining was a chance to “let my hair down” a little, turn up the tunes and play what I love loudly and proudly. Of course, letting my actual hair down would frankly be just dangerous – it would be impossible to tell up from down and given that I already struggle enough with left from right this would probably end up in tears! But, as I got lots of playlist questions I’ve pulled together some of the highlights from the two sessions …
https://soundcloud.com/sarah-kekus/sets/soulshining
