by Hilary Lindsay | Dec 1, 2014 | Asana, Feldenkrais, nashville yoga, Yoga, yoga class, Yoga Philosophy, yoga teacher, yoga teaching |
Injuries surfaced a dozen years ago; injuries that told me my career as a teacher was over but that’s not me. I kept going, changing my focus, my message, my style, my mission. Screw defeat. Vacillating between discipline of form and giving it up altogether to find my own circuitous path in a bi-polar vortex of pain and pissed, I’ve learned a couple of things. I’ve come all the way back and been completely broken again. I could not get up off the yoga room floor the day I was sure all my injuries were gone. Superman met kryptonite that day as I came down confidently from the impossible height forced by a block under my sacrum and could not even move a finger. Shithead. You are paralyzed. You forgot your fragility in the ecstasy of a whole strong spirited body again. But you are not that. Now you know. Back I crawled into my Feldenkrais womb of acceptance for all that is true about this body on this day, this age: Crawl crookedly as I am and find myself in my circuitous path born of instinct and survival. Bring it back to the yoga floor and try again. But if I stay a crooked path with a crooked body, won’t I get more crooked? I feel sure that is true and work to strike the balance again. On days uninspired by a willing body I strike out with alignment from my Iyengar toolbox as a weapon against a blank page that refuses to be written. ABC is familiar and safe. Except when the letters...
by Hilary Lindsay | Aug 28, 2014 | nashville yoga, Yoga, yoga class, yoga community, Yoga Philosophy, Yoga psychology, yoga teacher, yoga teaching |
The yoga teacher is teaching a ballet bar class. She utilizes her skills where she can. Movement is beautiful in so many forms. Grace and understanding come through countless actions. She enters the university’s room being vacated by an aerobics class. The slender aging aerobics teacher is no bigger than a girl; no body fat. She glistens with sweat. Her shirt has a message: Big Fat Writing. Tomorrow You Can Do Better Do the students look defeated or does the yoga teacher imagine that the humid air is perfumed with hope and sorrow? That shirt raised my shackles. First of all, why do you have to do better in aerobics class? But that shirt wasn’t about aerobics class and either was my reaction. How about letting the students enjoy the fruit of today’s labor before thinking it wasn’t as good as it could be? How much better it could be, might be a dream but might also be a nightmare born of a Puritan ethic. Good people never give up. Hard work is the key to the kingdom for eternity. Do better is the unspoken universal mantra, isn’t it? Does anyone want to do worse? Not even for a moment does someone exist without acting. Even against one’s will, one acts by the nature-born qualities. ~ Krishna– – Bhagavad Gita We couldn’t do nothing even if we tried. And it might not be “nature- born” to best oneself with regularity but it is certainly bred into our culture where more is the mantra and better is mores’ companion....
by Hilary Lindsay | Jul 18, 2014 | Yoga, yoga community |
I’m subbing and don’t know the clientele. I ask the standard questions: Is anyone new to yoga? Is anyone injured? Are there any requests? They smile at me but nothing else. I ask; why are you here today? To my surprise the first answer is “love”. Love? I’ve never met her before. It does not seem logical that I can provide what she wants. Look up the word love and see that there is no absolute definition. What is love? It can be a multitude of things. As stated on Wikipedia: This diversity of uses and meanings combined with the complexity of the feelings involved makes love unusually difficult to consistently define, compared to other emotional states. And within this discussion of love, an interesting premise for the yoga class is written: Love may be understood as a function to keep human beings together against menaces and to facilitate the continuation of the species We are empowered by the comfort of community. It’s primal. I used to work on film sets. The experience was not unlike the commonality of the group who spends a couple of days together at a yoga retreat (except for the liquor, x-rated banter and sleepless nights:)). You are an impermanent collective with one purpose. Yoga studios promote community which requires a consistent group of participants. In this case there seemed to be a random section of the population who had not met previously, who did not gather before or after class. Could love then be described as a function of community? It did not feel that way to me. I have taken class with...
