Yoga Teacher Training Course

Sunday February 17th 2008

Yoga Teacher Training Course, Victoria, London

Saturday

Loaded down this morning with lots of posture notes for today's course sessions. This is our last Posture Lab weekend and we should know pretty much all the postures we cover on the course by the end of it. I had turned in my "Preparation for Practicum" homework just in time but do have a few gaps in my schedules which I will need to fix as soon as possible.

Turnout is up on last time - six today versus the four last time. But no Rhea, who had been in touch by email in the few days before and who I though was coming. Some people who had been regulars haven't been seen for many months - Brigitte, Zev, Claudia, and so on. But Sarah is back after her wedding in South Africa (bearing some pictures for us all to see).

The morning is with Camille doing the Posture Labs for backbends (and a couple of twists left over from last time) As always, I really enjoyed her teaching. After our meeting a couple of weeks ago, we decided that it would be a good idea for Camille to have her own website as I could get Darren to do one based on Linda's site. So Camille has sent me loads of text for the site which I will be editing next week. But today we needed to take one or two additional pictures for the site - some portrait shots and some photogenic postures.

Over lunch I had a chat with Victoria who, it turns out, is a philosophy graduate from King's College Cambridge and is trying to raise funding to do a further degree in Anthropology and Philosophy at UCL. I was telling her about my own MSc application and was a bit alarmed by how much work she had put into her applications compared to how much I did. I have had acknowledgement emails from LSE about my application but I think I need to be proactive in respect of getting my references to them and so on. I am worried that I didn't put in enough effort on this.

The afternoon is entirely set aside for Swami who is taking us through the Bhagavad Gita, chapter by chapter. It is at least 20 years since I read this all the way through, though I did read a bit last year. Though it is a three hour session, it rattles along pretty well and is one of the best lessons we have had I thought. Tomorrow we are having a similar lecture on Patanjali's Yoga Sutras which I would have really liked to have seen but have to leave early as Emma was coming home for the weekend and I didn't want to not see much of her.

My hotel tonight is at somewhere called the "Hyde Park Apartments" near Queensway tube. These are hotel rooms with small cooking areas in them - 4* and among the best places I have stayed during the course, though I have yet to find somewhere with a bath which would be nice for a change

Sunday

Breakfast at a small cafe by Queensway tube and then rather a pleasant walk across Hyde Park and down to Victoria, which took me longer than expected and resulted in me not having time to buy food for lunch, etc.

Elena was teaching us for most of today. We started with a lecture on adjusting and assisting which was very interesting and has left me with loads of stuff to think about. Then we we split into pairs to prepare a short body awakening sequence followed by some preparatory postures leading up to a particular pose - in our case, Marichyasana C. I was paired with Tracy and I thought we did a pretty good job overall. A reasonably nice warm up sequence, so good prep poses. Not bad I thought. But Elena did raise lots of points for us which was a bit disappointing. We were the first group to present and that may have had something to do with the long discussion we had about our sequence. That did leave a little less time for the other groups.

Departure at 2:30 so I could get home in good time to see Emma and cook a meal with her tonight. We now only have two more practice weekends left before our final assessment weekend. So we do all need to be working hard now on our planned assessment classes, etc. Next time we have practical tests all day on the Saturday - that will be a very tough day i would think.