Awesome new interview with Ana from April 2010. She talks about finding a home in the San Juan islands off the coast of Washington state… my family lived on Whidbey Island for a while in the same area & it is an amazing place. Ana also discusses aging in a magical way & a bit about her upcoming book.
Check it out, it’s an inspiring read!
Continuing on — I think these are really worthwhile questions to put out there, to ask & answer & try & be honest about. So, questions 2 & 3….
2) When you are teaching (or practicing) what does it mean/how does it feel to connect to your heart?
As Heidi reminded us, teaching from the heart means being authentic, present, compassionate with yourself & your students, & in feeling. Adding a caveat from me – It doesn’t mean being a pushover, being drippy & sappy all the time 
or faking squishy niceness on days it isn’t there. It’s talking to students from where I am. Putting my hand on my heart & breathing into that can really help, as can consciously breathing in whatever I feel & speaking from that truth.
3) Are you taking on responsibilities in your life or your teaching that create shielding in your heart?
I’ve heard Ana speak on this a number of times. If you/one/I am trying to take responsibility for someone else’s happiness, it just doesn’t work. It builds shields & resentment. No one can do someone else’s work for them. And if I’m taking on too much, as Heidi also said, I just feel overwhelmed & teaching (even practicing!) starts to feel like a chore. Drawing appropriate boundaries with the people & tasks in life actually frees the heart.
Last two tomorrow!
This past weekend, Heidi hosted a FY MP conference call. She asked some very good thinking/feeling questions. I’d like to pass on the Q’s first, then some of my thoughts on A’s tomorrow.
1) How does yoga feed your connection to your heart?
2) When you are teaching (or practicing) what does it mean/how does it feel to connect to your heart?
3) Are you taking on responsibilities in your life or your teaching that create shielding in your heart?
4) Are you making a conscious choice to feed your heart in your life and while you teach?
5) Sometimes, having a connection to your heart just isn’t in the cards for the day. Do you criticize and batter yourself then?
Breathe on that for a little while.
I’ve spent much of today compiling my final package to send in for full Forrest certification
It’s a complicated thing. Completing the Forrest Yoga Foundation Teacher Training means you get to be a 200 hr Registered Yoga Teacher with Yoga Alliance.
But you’re not a fully certified Forrest teacher yet. You’re an associate. Nothing wrong with that, but I’ve had the paperwork just waiting on me for almost two years to finish the whole thing up!
See, I completed 90% of the requirements for full certification in a mad dash immersion within six weeks of coming home from my April 08 training.
But I couldn’t pull the trigger. Now, with 3/4 of the Mentorship Program year done, and a bunch of my internal crap processed, I’m ready.
After my Forrest accreditation is complete, that means I can submit for 500 hr RYT status with Yoga Alliance. Which is a nice thing.
The certification requirements make up a whopping big package of paper. For the curious, here are the requirements, as shown on the Forrest website.
http://www.forrestyoga.com/page.cfm?name=certification
Steps to Obtain a Forrest Yoga Teaching Certification
•Completion of the Teacher Training Course – Foundation, including the Forrest Yoga Business Workshop and Functional Anatomy for Yoga
•100% attendance at daily meditations, yoga intensives, afternoon instruction, Business course, Functional Anatomy for Yoga.
•Participate in co-teaching the Introduction to Forrest Yoga Workshop (any missed classes will jeopardize your certification).
•15 hours of unsupervised community service teaching.
•20 hours of anatomy instruction (as of 2010 Ellen Heed’s Functional Anatomy for Yoga will be included in the Foundation course, and the anatomy required for certification).
•Attend 40 additional yoga classes (10 of which should include typed critiques).
•Submit a flyer advertising your yoga class and you as a yoga instructor.
•Begin teaching ongoing classes (public or private) within 6 months of Teacher Training course completion and submit proof of your paid teaching.
•Develop a class plan for an injured student or an injury you have been working on. Take the class yourself and provide written feedback about whether it addressed the issue.
•Read the Forrest Yoga Teacher Training Manual and all items on the supplementary reading list. There are writing assignments to be done in relationship to these readings. Reading list is sent to enrolled trainees.
(FYI — My writing assignments on the training manual are about 30 pages long, and my notes on the 30-some book reading list are about 40 pages worth. The postage is going to be quite a lot!!)
A large part of this past weekend’s Forrest Yoga Mentorship program workshop was doing “seeing circles.”
A seeing circle is an element of the Forrest Yoga teacher training & a very interesting tool. Here’s how it goes.
- Take your group/class/trainees and warm up their eyes by putting them into a yoga pose (horse stance is popular cuz it gets you into the legs/feet/grounded & heats one up quite spectacularly fast) and doing focal point exercises. Like tracing a clock face with the eyes, then focusing near & far quickly.
- Then sit them in a circle.
- Three people come into the center of the circle. One goes into a yoga pose of their choice. The other two walk around & look at them. One of them is tasked with observing specifics of what is happening in the pose, like if the chest is closed down or lifted up, whether the legs seem engaged or not etc. Not criticizing the pose or fixing it, just observing. The other is tasked with deriving more general statements — like, drawing from the collapse in the chest a sense of low confidence or the fact that the feet are really grounded shows strength & ability to support herself.
It is quite an exercise. First, the person in the pose has to be willing to be really seen by others. Not just by the people making the observation, but by the whole group.
And the people working on seeing need to slow down the fast pace of received intuitive information without going into overanalysis/thinking mode. We see people & make intuitive leaps alot without getting how it happens. Stopping mid-leap to try & break down WHY we see something in a person is challenging. And articulating exactly what you’re seeing & what it means & why you think that is also exceedingly hard.
But taking part in the circles this weekend showed me that people really do receive a lot of information without consciously realizing it. And that we can feel something that seems to be coming from someone else — feeling someone’s anger, or grief or joy like it just rolls off them into your body. It’s a matter of tuning in. Also, the first, instantaneous reactions were usually correct.
It’s a matter of getting out of the way, putting a lot of conscious thought aside & trying to get into your felt, gut sense.
This weekend’s Forrest Yoga Mentorship workshop with Heidi will focus on “seeing” or intuition.
When I went down to see her two weekends ago, I asked about how to practice my intuition… it’s something I’m quite interested in getting in touch with. Mostly because I seem to know fewer & fewer facts each day so I need all the help I can get from my senses.
Heidi had, as usual, a thoughtful & succint approach. The key to getting in touch with what is going on with others & the world at large is to get into your own skin/breath/self. The more you can be present, the more you can feel, the more you can intuit.
The other side is learning to trust the information received. Basically, we’ve been collecting a huge amount of data our entire lives, all of which is embedded somewhere, even if we can’t consciously access it. So knowing something without knowing how you know it is a common experience — the trick is trusting that.
So I’ve been practicing feeling what is going on with me, with others, & trusting it. And trusting what I feel I want & what I feel is good for me.
Looking forward to learning more this weekend!
As referenced in the FYCET Day 5 post (http://autumnlotusyoga.omblogger.com/2010/01/28/fycet-day-5) Ana had us do a writing exercise focused on several key questions. Here’s my response (most of it) to the first question on what delights my spirit.
Playfulness
Deep breathing
Pretty clothes
Beloved Husband
Our kitties
Quiet time to myself
Healthy touch
People I’m comfortable with
Really good food
Feeling proud of myself
Moving forward
Feeling grounded, vibrant, supported
What does your list look like?
It delighted my spirit to take two full-on 90 minute hot classes today. Way wicked cool. Except, like, 95 degrees. Which was perfect since it’s freaky frigid in Boston right now. Was tired but extra bendy for the second class. The bath & rollin’ time seemed useful today as well so I’m gonna try it all again tomorrow. Next weekend is the second Mentorship session in New Haven & only two weeks till assisting (knock wood!)