Uninvited Self-Study

I taught my final Vinyasa class.

This style is rich in swift and crafty transitions that streamlines the breath, magically dropping students into a meditative dance. It’s become the bread and butter of most popular all-level yoga studio classes for its ability to amplify connection. 

Well, that sounds delightful! Why the hell did you take it off your schedule…? 

“Cha cha cha changes,” as the great David Bowie would bout, is was time to embrace the important lesson of impermanence.

I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence

It is hard to “Face the strange”, especially when you are not exactly clear on where it’s taking you. By the end of 2019, I had spent 5 years prepping one weekly sequence that primed a shiny peak pose. This same sequence would be taught at 3 different studios, to mixed level students, 12 times in one week. By the last class, I had a masterpiece to reflect all the feel good vibes and inspiration to do it all over again. This method that served me well before covid times broke my, along with everyone else’s, stamina and spirit. 

When I lost my somewhat insane schedule, I began practicing for longer periods of time. 2-3 hours of practice, observing the before, dwelling in the after. I was studying with two consistent teachers (megan & chrissy). I would take breaks to write, wander, and drive to nowhere. I was unfolding another layer of myself as a student of the practice, my relationship to my partner and our newly purchased 100- year-old home, and as a human amidst this swirling dismay of daily life.

As I slowly returned to teaching in-person group classes, I omitted music, no longer relying on the curation of a bomb playlist to pair with all the moving parts of a sequence. It felt quiet and really empty, and it was intimidating to be the main sound echoing off the walls of a space that was once flooded with mats wall to wall.

I began to find solace in smaller, softer class sizes where each word articulated from my tongue became thunderous. I got time to practice listing words that were resonating, sculpting concepts I was introducing, as I was no longer carrying this responsibility to make euphoric soundtracks to what I was leading. There are teachers that do this so well, and I gained a ton of relief when I realized I did not have to check that box anymore.

The feelings of change in how I approach teaching become more unavoidable through the response from students as I observed them. We were taking time to set things up with intention and placing value in the quiet space that nestled within all the nooks and crannies of these interesting postures. We were rediscovering the wonder and awe of returning to a community practice. Subtle awarenesses of incremental shifts, influenced the depth of our presence and the willingness to drop deeper within. The less and less flowy my sequences became, the more and more I witnessed this domino effect of flowing from within.

The birth of my new class Align. I’m in the prime age category where most women are birthing something, so I suppose I should not be so caught off guard.

The truth I’ve come to realize is that I was never a vinyasa teacher in the first place. Which may sound trivial, but this was the career path that I had been chasing. I had attached myself to a label because it gave me structure, direction, and helped me craft my skill. It worked because I worked it, until it eventually died and only ashes remained that I could no longer grasp. Yes, it felt this dramatic in the moment. It needed to in order to avert my attention from dancing around my svadhyaya, or own self-study. This feels relevant to me in a myriad of life examples, where it’s not until the moment I sit down with a quill to wrote out an invitation, address it to myself with priority postage and actually sit down and open the message that was waiting to be read all along.