Regularity and Simplicity go hand in hand.

A long time ago, before I even contemplated training to be a yoga teacher I practice Astanga Vinyasa yoga. I longed to be able to practice 6 days a week as the tradition prescribed but the time it took to do full Primary made it almost impossible to fit into my daily routine (without getting up at 4.30am or something equally foolish!), so it turned out that apart from my bi-weekly Astanga classes, my mat stayed in it’s funky mat bag!

Over the years, with my discovery of Viniyoga and Satyananda (both of which traditions I draw inspiration from) and especially my discovery and training in Yoga Therapy, and of course becoming a teacher myself, I began to find that the more simple you kept your practice, the more regular your practice would be. I know that my 30 minute practice every morning does me far more good than struggling on my mat for 2 hours and only managing it once a week.

Once I began my daily practice I noticed that other things in my life became routines as well. For example, I get up early every morning to do my yoga practice even though I don’t really have to get up as early as I do, it just feels right these days. I have also found my life becoming more simple. I no longer crave the excitement I used to and am happy here at home with my belove and my kitties!

When I work with clients on a one-to-one basis I have two pieces of advice I give them for sticking to their self practice:-

1) Keep it Simple – Don’t make hugely ambitious goals for yourself that you will never keep. Let’s start with 20 minutes of yoga 2 or 3 times a week.

2) However simple the goal STICK WITH IT!!!! If you don’t feel like getting on your mat just do it anyway. After a few weeks you’ll just step on your mat regardless.

With more routine and regularity in my life, my life has become better. All my adventures these days begin on my mat!

Namaste

Since I got back from teaching on the retreat in Turkey last year I’ve been trying to work out where I’m going with my career. As some of you know, teaching a retreat in the sunshine on the beach had been the height of my ambition. After it happened, as early as the plane trip home I felt deflated and directionless.

I’ve carried on teaching, I’ve carried on reading, I’ve carried on going to yoga training days. Don’t get me wrong, I love my job with a passion, I’m just looking for something else.

I had two directions. I could either go back into academia and write my PhD or I could pursue the health and fitness avenue.

I mulled it over, I drank a lot of cups of tea and then I realised that right now I’m not ready to face academia again. If one could write one’s PhD without the politics of academia (and Cambridge University is like an Agatha Christie novel there is so much lying, gossiping and backbiting) it would be wonderful. But one can’t.

So to cut a long story short I have decided to pursue the health and fitness route further. I am already a qualified yoga instructor and yoga therapist and Level 3 on the Register of Exercise Professionals, so the world is my oyster in terms of where I can go from here. Because I already teach and have my Anatomy and Physiology Diploma (which I’m going to do the Refresher for), I can branch out without having to do the hours and hours of supervised teaching and anatomy exams.

So I have decided to train to teach Pilates as well. Personally I think yoga and pilates work well together (not in the same class obviously, I mean from a teaching perspective). As my yoga practice and my teaching become slower, deeper, working on subtle energies, so I feel I need a more dynamic and anatomical challenge. It’s also another string to my bow workwise/clientwise.

I will do the eight week intensive once we move to Cambridge next year. In the meantime I have to do at least 30 hours with a Pilates instructor.

Now, I did a lot of Pilates in the past, but haven’t had a teacher for a couple of years since my old teacher went back to Australia. So I went to my first class with my new teacher yesterday. Oh My God I’d forgotten how hard Pilates is! I ache and ache!

But it’s a new challenge, a new step on the career ladder, another step in getting my body back to full health and another step for Project Fitness.

When I first started to teach yoga I planned my lessons in the finest detail — what we would do, how we would do it and exactly how long it would take.

Gradually over the years my lesson plans have become less and less detailed. I have learned that there are times when certain postures/sequences are out of the question depending on who is in the class and what the energy feels like. I have learned to gauge what my students want to do rather than what I want to teach and so I lean more and more towards the stance of making lessons up on the spot.

Obviously left completely to my own devices things could get chaotic so I always have a theme and a central posture that we will work up to and down from. Vinyasa krama – step by step.

For example, last week my theme was legs and hips, my central posture was parsvakonasana – working on the energy from heel to fingertip. I teach two general level classes a week (my other classes are specialist; therapy or pregnancy), and the way we worked up to and down from these postures was quite different in each class. The energy was high on Wednesday and I could tell that the class needed a strong practice. On Thursday, however, the energy was quite different and I needed to work on a more restorative flow into the central posture with longer in savasana at the end.

It used to drive me wild when the randomness of life meant I couldn’t stick to my lessons plans, but over time I am beginning to cultivate the notion of flux. Just allowing myself to roll with whatever my students need. And with this knowledge I grow to love teaching more and more and more each day!