Today I arrived at a new point in my yoga journey. Teaching (together with my 2 co-teachers) our first public yoga class at Krishna Village.
After spending many hours last night going over my part of the sequence, practicing my words, prompting for inhalation and exhalations, remembering all the different benefits of each pose I fell asleep feeling nervous but somewhat confident with the level of practice I had put into the sequence.
As I drifted off to sleep (thinking it would be an early night so I could be nice and fresh for the morning class), I slept yoga! Literally! Going over sequences in my dreams, articulating my words, remembering Sanskrit and waking up in a hot sweat only to fall back into a dream of yoga sequences, Sanskrit and contemplating different ways I could express ‘keep a straight spine’.
Finally, at 4.30am my alarm went off and boy was I relieved. Finally I could escape my dream state and make it all a reality. I was ready to get out of bed and just do it! I had 5 hours of practice the day before, followed by 7 hours of practice in my sleep. Plus, 3 years of anticipation to become a yoga teacher and 4 years of passionate love for yoga coming together, building up to this very moment! A moment, we as a group, could share the one thing that brought us here, our love for yoga and to be of service to our students.
Feeling a bit tired but running on pure adrenalin, we moved to the yoga hall to set up the room. Nerves and anticipation were running through all of us as we went over the final little bits and pieces.
The class started with some concentration work and gentle poses to wake up the body, we then moved through to the middle part of the poses which was my sequence. It was raining, raining hard! Trying to raise a shaky and nervous voice over the sound of pelting rain on a tin roof was challenging, but I managed! And, before I knew it, my section was over and my co-teachers were flowing on nicely. Time passed fast and the next moment, we were moving through the final relaxation. We had glided through the entire class. The nerves had passed and we were all feeling a mixture of emotions the entire experience.
For me, the feeling of completing a yoga class and holding space for people to feel their body and contemplate intentions, and to find gratitude for themselves and their practice is something truly exhilarating. I feel more exhilarated and satisfied than I could have ever imagined.
I can’t wait to see the roster for our next class so I can have the opportunity to teach again, maybe stepping out of my comfort zone even further and trying a different segment of the sequence and to think up new ways to share the practice with the class.
Having been at Krishna Village for 3 weeks and to come to this moment where I can reflect on how far we, as a group, have come; makes me realise that despite some ups and downs and slight bumps along the way, it is worth every moment of nerves to gain so much knowledge and know that we are on our way to becoming the best version of ourselves, and deliver high quality yoga to this community as well as our future students. We have all worked so hard; walking around the village talking to ourselves, practicing our sequence, learning different teaching techniques. We are arriving at a poignant phase of our training where there is an obvious shift from us being fresh yoga teacher trainee’s and students becoming part of a team of yoga teachers, sharing knowledge and having a deeper understanding of the essence of yoga.
A big thanks to the Krishna Villages’ team of teachers, and their teachers teacher’s for shining the torch light of knowledge in our hearts and souls, lifting our vibration and selflessly giving us the gift of becoming the best version of ourselves in our practice.
