newbies

I read a couple of blogs written by newly qualified yoga teachers. They ooze positivity, enthusiasm and this beautiful desire to just share and share and share which is the yoga teacher’s calling. They make me feel so excited and they rekindle my own enthusiasm for yoga and for teaching and for sharing. And just as a heads up for any newbie or trainee teachers reading this, that feeling of bursting at the seams with information you want to give your students and trying to find the balance between too much and not enough in terms of instruction never ever leaves. Nor does feeling sick with nerves before every class but maybe that’s jut me?

Reading these blogs made me start thinking about my own journey from trainee to newbie to …. well whatever it is I am now. A yoga teacher of five years standing, not an old hand by any means and still with so much to learn, but no longer a newbie. No longer wet behind the ears. And then I started to wonder what this blog would have been like if I had started it right at the beginning. Right when I first started teaching. Because I have forgotten so much of what that felt like.

It’s not as though I take teaching for granted or do it on autopilot or anything as sinful as that. It’s just that these days teaching yoga is so much a part of who I am and such a massive part of my identity (although not the part that other people seem to think, but that’s an exploration for another day), that it is second nature to me. I know which instructions I need to focus on in each class, I know how to work with the energy of the room on a given day, I know how to throw my lesson plans out the window if need be and wing it, I no longer feel I need to meticulously plan everything. But I want to know how I felt when I was new to this. When everything was an eye-opener, when I still questioned everything.

There is still so much I don’t know about this beautiful yoga, so very much and in many ways my journey as a bodyworker has only just begun (massage school starts this weekend and Pilates training continues to beckon with tempting fingers), but I know that never again will I be that blank canvas that I was during those first six months of regular teaching.**

So trainees and newbies, keep your journals and blogs for posterity, in five years time you will want to read them!

Readers, is there a period of your life you wish you had been able to blog about?

Oh, also, tune in tomorrow for a new giveaway!!

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** During my teacher training we were required to write a journal of our experiences. This journal was handed in at various intervals during my 3.5 years of training***. Reading it back now it seems a mix of pretension and negative self talk. Not what a blog would have been like at all…

*** Yup, 3.5 years. You can read more about lengthy British teacher training and why it rocks here! Teacher training itself is about 2.5 years but I did an optional extra year as well because I am a dork.

Posted on 22nd September 2010 in recipes of the week. 1 comment

humpday recipe: apple tart

So last week we looked at making pastry. Well we looked at Himself making pastry if I’m honest, what with me not being able to do it and all….

This week we’re going to turn that pastry into an apple tart.

First you need to make a pastry case for your tart. Grease a pie tin…

Then carefully place your rolled out pastry into the pie tin. The best way of doing this is by picking the rolled out pastry up draped over your rolling pin and laying it over the tin then pressing it into shape and cutting off the excess. Personally I use a much more slap dash approach which usually involves sticking the pastry together again with soy milk, but we won’t go into that….

You will need some of these…

You put these into your pie crust before baking to stop it rising and bubbling. Uncooked rice works just as well but these can be used again and again….

(Tip: Don’t forget to put a sheet of baking parchment onto the bottom of the pie crust before putting the baking beads in otherwise you will spend half an hour picking out the beads one by one as they have stuck to the crust. You will note I forgot to do this. It was a useful exercise in mindfulness….)

Bake the pie crust (avec beads/rice) for 15 minutes at 200*C/400*C/Gas Mark 6 and then take out, remove paper and beads and bake for a further 5 minutes.

Meanwhile we can think about the filling….

Apples! Home grown (by a friend of Ma Yogini’s) Bramley cooking apples to be exact. You will need seven. Chop up and core five of them (some people peel them too but I like to leave the skin on) and pop in a pan with a couple of tablespoons of water and a tablespoon of sugar. Heat over a medium heat until it looks like this….

Gloopy!

Then fill your piecrust with this yummy apple mixture….

Cut up your remaining two apples into thin slices and place over the top of the pie. Sprinkle with another tablespoon of sugar (I never said this recipe was healthy!)….