Yoga Teaching - sort of . . . .

Sunday February 3rd 2008

Yoga Teacher Training Course, Oxford Circus, London

A trip up to London to give a talk to the newest of Elena's Yoga Teacher Training Courses. After a phone call earlier in the week, we switched the order of the sessions so Elena would now be leading off with her first Body Awakening session and I would be following immediately before lunch.

The main gain for me from this is that I got to see a session from a different viewpoint than being a participant. This is the first time I have really been able to focus on a class in this way and it was pretty odd to see the wide variety of "bodies in action" - in other words, the wide variety of ways that people sought to do what Elena was asking them to. I did a little bit of adjusting to a couple of people, but not a lot.

My session was called "An introduction to the course" and was focused on picking out relevant points from the syllabus and explaining what the various things meant. So hopefully, unlike my own course, participants will know exactly what they are doing as the course develops.

For the first part of the lecture Elena sat in, which did throw my timing off a little as she expanded on what I was saying. And then when she did leave me to it later on, I got a whole raft of questions from virtually everyone on the course. Maybe another illustration of the way that feedback is hard to get. My lecture also featured a short anatomical lesson which I did with Christina (who has switched off my course onto this one). That was rather fun I thought.

So I was a little late finishing but not too bad. And the initial feedback was quite good from people. I have now taught on a YTTC course - I wonder when that will happen again.

Then off to the Angel to meet up with Camille (and baby Ina) for a chat about Well Being. This was a wide ranging discussion with lots of interesting points arising from both sides. For instance, we are going to try and make a good standard DVD when we are in Italy at the end of the summer. Camille reckons we could do a really good job on this - afterall, she is a dance and theatre director and so is bound to be better at this than Linda or myself. We are also thinking about sorting Camille out with a website of her own (if I can sort out an appropriate way for it to be done really cheaply)

So an interesting day overall - with much to think about.

Later on I got a really nice email from one of the course participants, Caitlin, who had seen our website and had spotted where she was briefly mentioned (in the post about the Yoga show). And she thought the Well Being Breaks idea was very nice. Nice to get some feedback so quickly.