Also, I recorded a snippet of the flow from the facilitation guide so I would be honored if anyone could provide feedback.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/19gnua5cO8ecn1Bcc8bE_A3YG9D4NUTii/view?usp=share_link
Reflecting on the elements: I enjoy waking up everyday and walking outside before sunrise to touch the trees, breath in the air, appreciate the clouds and give thanks to it all! When the season is fit, I for sure go to the river all the time to just feel the energy and become one with it. 🙂
How do you currently define or experience contentment in your body or in your leadership?
To be comfortable in one's own skin and to accept things simply as the way they are in all of it's beauty--for the body. In leadership, not judging those you are leading and allowing the pace of the student to be as it shall, not the expectations of the leader. I also think showing the content one has for one's own body to others is a form of leadership. Leading by example and expressing no desire for the things one does not have.
When preparing to facilitate, what patterns or habits do you notice around control, pressure, or striving?
I think wanting to be perfect in the instruction so everyone has an enjoyable experience is the most nervous part. Also, that nobody will walk out of the class. Ha! But those are all things out of my control. I think there is a good balance of exerting some leadership in the class such as instructing which way to face the mats or offering props. From there, I think then it's time to just relax and allow the students to explore their space, poses and self.
But I do just get nervous with talking out loud because I am not sure it will make sense to others, maybe my own perspective is off and I'm doing these poses wrong! lol. That's more extreme than I really get into, in the past while in jail, I wasn't nervous because I didn't have a "teacher" title to me. I just told other inmates they essentially were just following my practice--altough I did tweak it over time to include everyone. Now, i feel more pressure simply by the idea of having the title of a certified Yoga Instructor. But again, it is merely a label used by society to allow me to stand in front of a group of people and safely lead them through a sequence. It does not change who I am. 🙂
What part of the new facilitation workbook sparked curiosity, clarity, or tension for you?
The sequences are done really well so I am definitely interested in using them as a great reference point in building my own. 🙂
The whole book is done so well. Very impressed!
I appreciate the prompts for this week and feel quite disciplined by them, in a way.
Maybe it helps to start with my response to the question about the experience of the new facilitation workbook. I am obsessed with the workbook and have been enjoying engaging with it over the past few weeks (we’ve had it for nearly a month at my time of posting.)
However, I also feel overwhelmed by it. I’m incredibly overwhelmed by the part of teaching yoga that is facilitating asana…which is, unfortunately for me, the bulk of what we’re likely to be up to!
I’ve been loving learning about the yamas and niyamas and anatomy and all of that. But now the rubber is starting to meet the road on facilitating asana. I don’t know that I’ve ever experienced more impostor syndrome than I do when facilitating asana. I’m so clumsy, I have many mobility issues—even though I’ve been practicing for quite a long time, almost 16 years, it’s hard for me to conceive of myself as having what it takes to lead anyone in a physical practice.
On the other hand, I feel like—give me a week to prepare and I’d feel 100% comfortable giving a lecture about yamas and niyamas. Following along with the workbook on the physical side? No.
But of course this is my struggle. I mean, I work as a university professor. Obviously, it’s easy and natural for me to intellectualize everything and pontificate. (I mean, even my discussion board posts are just rambling on and on, and I can’t seem to figure out how to be succinct. Very sorry.)
When it comes to patterns and habits I’m noticing, it’s this: I have a lot of ego about myself as a teacher of theory-heavy courses in my professional life, so the specter of (1) teaching a physical practice, and (2) being bad at it, are quite threatening to how I see myself. So, I’m mired in all of the issues you mentioned—control, pressure, and striving. Indeed, all five of the kleshas are running amok. I even told my breakout group last week that what I’ve learned from yoga teacher training is that I don’t think I can be a yoga teacher! Whether that’s true or not, it’s not coming from a healthy place, and it will be important for me to push through the fear and ego, especially.
Contentment shows up the second I re-realize what is important and what is not. We went on a camping trip a week ago and I was so stressed, tightly wound, and bothered by every little thing leading up to the trip. The second I realized how I was stealing from myself and my boyfriend, contentment poured over me. All that matters is that I am lucky enough to go on a little trip with the person I love the most. Ordering the wrong blanket and booking the wrong date at the campground just turned into adventures that we walked through with laughs and love. Worrying only stole from that beautiful experience. This is only one example too, I do this all the time and I hope to start having the realization before I start spiraling.
It was helpful to understand santosha as a "calm in a storm," or an "unwavering commitment to self," instead of a striving for perfection and for everything to be okay and flawlessly wonderful all the time, as I previously believed for most of my life Contentment was something I had to go get, not something I could be. I'm STILL working on this differentiation and struggling. Attachment is so hard, and I think the ability to release is a part of Santosha. The striving toward contentment feels like a personal call from deep inside to be as kind and attentive to yourself so that your mind/body/spirit has the capacity for endurance and release amid the hardest of times...physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. Any bit of striving gets us closer than we were before..perhaps with practice glimmers of Santosha can become more frequent and present in the day to day. It's so true that many of us(if not all of us?) absolutely have an addiction to power and privilege in one way or another in ways we may be conscious of or not...As settlers on stolen land we are born into the assumption that much belongs - and is entitled - to us.. whether it be land, people, species that we are aware of or not. Addiction is masked as normal American life, whether it be in the form of power, control, privilege, aversion, excess, etc. It's easy for me to define discontentment in my body and all the things that Santhosa is NOT.. it so visceral to me, yet harder for me to explain what Santosha might feel like in my body... more breath in my lungs, more oxygen to my muscles, more peace to my mind, ease to my heart...
When preparing to facilitate, I notice my pattern of fear, pressure to perform, and striving to embody some experienced yoga teacher I am just not yet. My first time teaching will be the time I say, "I am OKAY to be who I am, a beginner, with other beginners, learning more about ourselves together. I am ALLOWED to be imperfect. I can be content in this body and in this stage and in this stage and DO THIS."