What they Hear

"It's not what you tell them that's important, but what they hear"

I am currently taking the Lighten Up Yoga's 500 hour teacher training program and assisting in the 200 hour program.  This weekend we worked on building poses for beginners.  I still feel like a beginner, even though I've been teaching for four years now.  It never stops, this learning.  Even as the poses have started to feel like old familiar friends, there is always some level of depthness I haven't yet explored, or I've forgotten, or my body has changed from the last day (sometimes the day before) that I practiced the pose.  

It's always a good practice to return to the basic standing poses.  One of these is Utthita Trikonasana.  We explored Trikonasana in depth this weekend, practiced many variations, and then paired up with other 500 hour teachers to practice the poses together and explore the different ways of explaining the pose to students.  This is such a helpful practice, and for all you Asheville teachers out there, I am always willing to meet up and practice together in this way.  Finding the language to explain the poses has been the most challenging aspect of teaching for me so far.  Lillah Schwartz's program at Lighten Up seems to focus heavily on this aspect of teaching and I could not be more grateful.

  * The toes of my back foot should be turned in a little more.

* a variation to emphasize lengthening the sides of the torso.

*a variation to emphasize lengthening the front hamstring and engaging the quadricep of the front leg.