Q: DOES YOUR YOGA TEACHER PRACTICE ?
Hello Beautiful Yogis, the short time before and after class at the studio can be very intense, checking people, settling new people, dealing with queries related to conditions, postures and Yoga in general đ and we like to focus on the practitioners and THEIR Yoga needs and dealing with such things in that limited time. However, frequently my personal practice crops up as a query; people always want to know when I practice; but studio time is a time to focus on YOUR Yoga needs not mine and so I will repost here a small piece I wrote a few years agoâŠ
A: YOU GOTTA PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH !
We get asked all the time when do we get our own practice in? Well like the rest of you we beg/borrow/snatch/swap time/commitments to get our shared class experience in. We practice some form of Yoga every day. Like I said in a previous post; you cannot really teach this Yoga unless from a place of recent experience. Yoga is always at the forefront of our mind/day/living/experience in everything we do ~ and when I fail miserably in real đ life (and I do) it is right there nudging me; start again. I will tell ye another time what underpins how I live and teach; but for the purposes of this post – itâs a beautiful freedom knowing that through your Yoga practice you get to have another go; clean the slate (great mental hygiene!); fresh start. I am not as good as Darren who for the last 16 years or so is up every morning at 5am getting in his Yoga often with a little chattering shadow mirroring his moves (our gerl Saoirse!) (ooh I am NOT a 5am person :)). Darren and I make the public classes that we can get to COUNT as there are never any guarantees as to when we will get to share another public class. Otherwise, oh the joys of having your own hot Yoga studio!, we do what we can on our own; once I get on top of my cleaning at the studio I then try and refine other asanas and of course I have my trusty Bikram cd {âZoomâ} that I have practiced to so often I could recite it backwards and yet it always catches me by surprise :)! Sometimes asana practice takes a back seat; for instance recent Easter half-term, summer holidays coming up and my daughter will be off school so I will up my meditation practice (she doesnât care when she is watching CBeebies that sitting shut eyed mummy is not a mummy taking 40 winks! but rather is a mummy meditating).
While it does require discipline to develop a lone practice I would like to share with you now why I think the shared class experience is SO important (and this is why us teachers can be so desperate to be IN them when we have an enforced break from Yoga (in half terms), thank goodness I can still at least teach and bear witness to you all working so hard.
Namaste ~ Trisha
PS about the picture: Evidence đ caught on camera by Dazza in yesterdayâs class! Yogi practicing đ We donât want to flood our page with Dazza/Trisha FB Yoga selfies, but we have to use pictures of ourselves to illustrate points. We like to get permission to take and use pics of others and we respect other peopleâs privacy we do not wish to intrude on their practice. We would absolutely much rather use pictures of YM practitioners over some random far flung unknown Yogi. â7 Qsâ and âBikrammingâ is one way local people can participate on this page ad hoc and celebrate their Yoga and of course we are always happy to take a pics of others when they ask too; often how you feel and look can be two very different things; a Yoga selfie can be a celebration to show you how far you have come; It can also show where you can make small changes for improvement. For instance, I see from my own pictures what I need to work on, but what they donât tell you is that I feel like a million dollars when I am making those moves !!!