Good Intentions. Big Ideas.

For me the new year brings a renewed intention to better my teaching and provide my students with something that they can use to spark their home yoga practice. My original idea was to follow the sequence of poses for each given week in the Yoga In Action: Preliminary Course by Geeta Iyengar. Since we sell this book at Yoga St. Louis (it can also be purchased through IYNAUS) it would then be easy for our students to follow along on their own if they so choose.

However, nothing is ever as simple as following a written sequence, especially if you've ever attended class with us at Yoga St. Louis. For one thing, each student is an individual that brings to class his/her own difficulties, conditions, injuries, samskaras (marks or impressions on the body and/or the subconscious), etc. We must take those conditions into account so that we can help each student learn how to work with what they have, especially so that no one is overdoing or forcing themselves to do beyond their capacity. As beginners, often times we don't know what our capacity is and we push ourselves - I think it's an American trait to "go for the burn". We don't yet have the sensitivity to know when we've gone past our limits. Perhaps this is one reason that the first yama of the eight-fold path of yoga is ahimsa or non-harming/non-violence.

We have named this blog "SweatyYaYa" so that it may help students remember the term svadhyaya or self-study. I believe that one cannot be a true practitioner of yoga - the unification of the body with the mind and the mind with the soul - if there is no reflection on the self, on how the body works (or doesn't work so well), or on the effects of one's own actions. Svadhyaya in asana practice is essential for learning how to live with and perhaps change our own conditions, and for progressing beyond our limitations. As BKS Iyengar states: "Yoga helps endure what cannot be cured and cure what need not be endured."

That being said, we tailor each class to the students present in class. Before the first class a student takes with us at Yoga St. Louis we discuss their physical conditions and what modifications they must make in their practice. Also, before class each week we ask that the students tell us of any new or acute issues they have, such as headache, illness, if one is on her period, etc. and again, modifications are then made for the student. In a class of 12 people it isn't unusual to have one or two doing their standing poses at the wall or perhaps a different sequence all together. So, you can see how trying to follow a prescribed sequence by the letter is a near impossibility. And the first Saturday 10:30 a.m. class of the year was no exception (you can read about that in the next post).

My intention now is to post the sequence that was taught, highlighting the focus of the overall class and briefly listing the modifications for individual students. I hope to do this for each class that I teach: Saturday, 10:30 a.m., Monday, 9:30 a.m., Wednesday, 6:30 p.m. and Friday, 6 a.m. I expect there may be fewer modifications in the Friday class as this is an Asana 1 class (not a beginner class), but I suppose we'll see, won't we?

These posts are for the benefit of our students as well as anyone interested in seeing how we conduct classes at Yoga St. Louis. They are not to be taken as medical advice of any kind.