Turning up to Yoga

When we turn up to a yoga class we are opening ourselves up to bringing a sense of peace, balance and well-being to our lives. In What happens in Class I wrote about the 8 parts that make up a 90 minute yoga session. In each session we move into ourselves, become energised through the breath, we set our intentions, involve ourselves in action through asana, we explore and experience stillness through relaxation, then knowing that something has changed for us, we note a difference to how we were feeling before we began to practice our yoga. Finally, whatever we have learned on the mat we take with us to our worlds that we live in. If we miss out one of the parts in the sequence we are not truly practicing yoga and although we may feel good we may become unbalanced in our practice.

When we practice yoga we bring into union the mind, body and breath. When we bring these elements together we settle the mind. In the settled state the limitations, criticisms and unhelpful self beliefs start to break away and we can truly see who we are and what we are capable of. The problem is that we need to turn up, we need to show up for ourselves. On my own reflections I have been guilty of not turning up to practice, I make excuses, I am tired, I have so much to do, I have had a bad day at work and I haven’t gone. Sometimes disappointment in myself sets in for not going, sometimes it feels okay to miss a class but what I can tell you is that the times when I have worked through my own objections to yoga practice and turned up regardless I have learnt something valuable, I have learnt how flexible I am, I mastered chaturanga even though I thought I couldn’t do and I have also left class in a state of happiness.

When anyone engages on their own yoga path there will be obstacles and most of the time those obstacles will be a result of our own doing and our own mindset but through continued practice we learn to navigate our way around them. We just need to turn up and sit on the mat.

Yoga and I

Prior to 2007 I had taken part in a handful of Yoga classes at the local gym. The classes were an hour long and the sessions were busy with about 25-30 people in them if not more. The classes were okay but it was difficult to remove myself from the constant thud of the beat of the music in the main gym area next door. At that point in time I didn’t feel yoga was for me. Fast forwarding a few years I was a member of a different gym and it was more geared up towards spa and relaxation, they had 90 minute yoga classes on offer but at that time again, I didn’t feel that yoga was for me.

In 2006 I sold my house and gave up my job and travelled for 8 months. I was unsettled at home and I was in a job that I had stopped enjoying. I had gone from School, Sixth form college, University and then continued with Postgraduate study. I was 31 and still had not left the education system. I was burnt out, exhausted and felt like I needed something more. Around the same time I started to have panic attacks and even though I would get up each day and do what I needed to do my anxiety was taking its toll. I was struggling to find something else that I wanted to do and one day it was suggested that I take some time out and go travelling. It seemed such a ludicrous idea at first but once I had thought about it seemed like a perfect solution.

I travelled to Thailand part way through my journey and as part of a cultural experience I had stayed in a Buddhist Temple.  It was here that practiced meditation 3 times a day. It was a truly enjoyable experience and far different from any meditation experience I had had from the yoga classes in the gym all those years before. The experience stayed with me for quite some time. Unfortunately, on returning to the UK, resuming study and going back to work the panic attacks returned and I was back to square one. This time I did take advantage of the longer yoga classes at the gym, I finally felt ready for Yoga.

The class was small, intimate and away from the main gym, it was quieter,  you could hear noise but it wasn’t so off putting. That first class was memorable for a few different reasons, firstly I was in a high state of anxiety at the thought of going to a class I had never been before, my anxiety continued for the majority of the class.  I honestly didn’t think I was going to make it through, but it was most memorable because at the end of the 90 minutes my anxiety was gone, I had survived. The connection I had made in my mind that if I practice yoga my anxiety would go stayed with me and I never looked back. As the months and years passed I am relatively anxiety free. I say not totally because I am human and sometimes as humans we let work and worry take over, the constant news feed from mainstream media and social media alike cause anxiety.   They  play on our fears and concerns, we pick up so much negativity from these sources we often don’t even realise it, yet what we see and read stays with us affecting our thoughts and feelings. Our thoughts are rarely present and seem to ricochet between the past and the future causing confusion of where we are and what we are meant to be doing.

There are so many benefits to Yoga but for myself it has so much more meaning. Yoga has taught me how to be calm, how to deal with stress, how to remove myself from drama and cope with challenges. Sometimes I forget and my thoughts will flit from past to future and from future to past but Yoga is a constant gentle and kind reminder that there is no past or future and takes me back to where I am meant to be, in the present.

Teaching Yoga for the first time

The decision to start to teaching yoga was not an easy one, I knew my work load was heavy, but I felt that I really wanted to get going with the teaching. I resolved that there was never a right time to start something new and so set about preparing my very first 8-week beginners course. I am so passionate about teaching and I love it, it feels very natural to me and do not have any issue in speaking in front of a large group of people which has always seemed strange considering I am not a person that seeks the limelight. When I deliver any training my tone of voice completely changes, as does my posture and the words just flow without any effort. I always trust my own timings, so I work out what I have to say and then just deliver in whatever time I have, and it just works.

With all my teaching and workshop facilitation experience in mind the prospect of developing an 8- week course wasn’t so daunting. I also had a framework to work around that my teacher Mick had provided as part of the yoga teaching course and I was able to entwine my own ideas into the sessions to make them more in line with my own style of teaching. What did make me feel more nervous was the thought of teaching something new that I wasn’t very experienced at to others. Whilst training we had practiced in class but somehow teaching on my own to my own group of students felt very different. As the first class approached I could feel myself becoming more and more nervous but in the back of my mind I kept thinking it’s going to be okay and thought of all the preparation I had under taken and I had prepared, I had prepared the first session as if I had never practiced yoga before in my life to the point where I felt exhausted.

On the day of the first class my work calendar was full and in between meetings there wasn’t really much time to think about teaching yoga plus I had arrived in the place you are when you are approaching an exam or an interview for a new job, there isn’t anything you can do, you know it’s coming and you just need to embrace the experience and just go for it and give the best you can.

Not long into the first class I remember there being a moment where all the students were in Savasana and I started to panic as I thought to myself I really cannot do this, but I stopped my unhelpful thoughts from going any further as I remembered who I was. I remembered all the times I had taught, from the first student nurse I mentored to developing and delivering infection control programmes in Northern Uganda and not to mention the very first time I delivered a beginners’ jewellery making workshop. All those experiences at some point had been new but I managed to do it every single time and so why should this moment be any different. As I relaxed into my thoughts I felt my natural teaching flow return and before I knew it the first session was over.