Another yoga teacher training weekend

Sunday November 11th 2007

Yoga Teacher Training Course, Victoria, London

Saturday

For most of the last week or so I have had a bit of a cough. It does seem to have got a bit better in the last few days but is still a nuisance and has resulted, once again, in me not doing as much preparation for this weekend as I had wanted. It is Anatomy test weekend and quite a few course participants are feeling stressed out as a result. When I first arrived this morning there was just Rhea around and she seems very concerned at the moment, not just about the test, but also about the workload for the entire course.

But first off today is Swami's next lesson on yoga philosophy. She seemed a little put out that she had only had four homeworks in since the last weekend. I sent mine in during the week and it came back with quite a few comments. She didn't agree with a lot of what I had written, that's for sure! This morning we are learning more about yogic physiology - prana, nadis and charkras to be precise. I tend to take much of this with a pinch of salt but I am also aware that most of it can be viewed in less literal ways. For instance, the chakras can be viewed psychologically.

Next up is Ivor lecturing on the digestive system. This is rather late as it could be tested in the Anatomy test tomorrow. The group's anxiety about this test does break through into some questions to Ivor about it, but he seems to think we should all be ok and gives a few hints about the format of the paper. For instance, we now know it contains some diagrams of the skeleton and muscles and asks you to label various features using a list of possibles. There are several extra items on the list, so it can't be entirely done by elimination. But at least we aren't just given the pictures and told to label them, which would be much harder. So I for one feel ok about it.

On Thursday this week Elena rang me and we agreed that I would do a short speech to the group about the way this course teaches the asanas, the posture labs, practicum, etc. This would be the first thing this afternoon. I can tell the group are a little puzzled when I announce that Elena has asked me to talk to them all. But armed with a short handout, I am soon in full flow going through the detail of how the course is set up. The response is rather as expected. Few people have really got to grips with what is involved and what needs to be done between now and the final exams. And as I suspected, this would have been an ideal session to have included in the very first two hours of the course back in June. We overshot my half hour slot but I thought the session went very well.

Elena starts the next session by emphasising that she does see the feedback process as being important and she does want us to take it as seriously as she does. Then she launches into her next technique lab - twists and inversions - and follows much the pattern that she has done to date. A long flowing sequence to warm us up and then a run through the specific postures in her usual playful and spontaneous manner. Tracy called it passionate during our session but I think many of us feel that a more analytical and detailed approach to each posture, with time to take notes, would probably be better.

I stayed after the final session for a little while distributing a few copies of the Well Being brochure to Romana, Eve and Elena. I would like to get rid of a few more and see what feedback I can get from them. Elena and I have a brief chat when we are packing up and Elena suggested that I could put some Well Being leaflets on her stand at the yoga show in a couple of weeks, which would be a very interesting idea. She and her husband were kind enough to give me a lift to my hotel, which was just as well as I had entirely the wrong idea about where it was.

As always I was pretty tired after a day's course and didn't go that far for some food. No doubt I should have done loads of revision for the test but probably managed less than 30 minutes all evening. Instead I read more of Nooteboom's "Roads to Santiago", a really fascinating travel book about Spain which has loads of stuff about the country's history.

Sunday

Time for another hour or so revision first thing this morning at the hotel and then a half hour walk from the hotel down to Victoria through Hyde Park. It lightly drizzled the whole way down but didn't really spoil the walk. I was totally hooked on a couple of tracks on the ipod this morning as well, especially Sonic Youth's "Pink Stream" from their album from last year.

Elena had appointed me "master of the keys" as she wasn't going to be at the course today. So I actually arrived at 9:00 to open up early and had time for another hour of revision, focusing on diagrams of the body and labelling muscles, bones, etc. By just before 10:00 there was only Swami, myself and Sarah and I did think that maybe everyone had bottled out of the test. But most people turned up soon after.

Swami's lecture this morning lasted three hours, which was perhaps a touch too long and covered the rest of her chakra lecture and an examination of the contents of the "Hatha Yoga Pradipika", one of the earliest yoga texts to mention specific asanas (16 in all). This was actually very interesting stuff I thought, but three hours was a very long lecture.

A brief lunch break during which I talked to Sarah about Well Being Breaks. She has just finished a management course of some sort and was telling me last time that she was really keen to get involved in project work. So I wondered if she might like to review our brochure and website and see what things she might do differently if she were in charge. I'm hopeful this might produce some interesting feedback but I'm also aware that she is getting married in a month or two and so might be busy with far more important things.

Then it was the anatomy test that we have all been fretting about. And I thought this turned out to be a bit easier than it might have been. I reckon I scored somthing like 58 out of 77 which I think ought to be enough. In the brief ten minutes break afterwards there were a few people who found it really tough, but you never know. I think the test format should have helped people do better than they might have thought.

After this we have a class of over three hours on the use of props. Again I found this to be a really long session and I was just about finished by 6:00 when we finally came to a end. A brief chat to Christina and Suzanne who were here today but hadn't heard my talk yesterday and then a dash for the coach and sleep most of the way home.

Post website completion, I had thought this week might be a little more relaxed but I have already thought of loads of stuff that I need to get started on.