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| experience? I wondered what stories you can all share about the first time you started teaching. Were you nervous? was it a disaster?
and a bit of a controversal question. Do you feel like a performer sometimes?
i would love to hear what everyone has to say.
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| The class was 90 min. I gave a speech for 45 min to 1 hour. And, then during the actual exercise, I spoke more on each exercise than we did them. Now, it is reversed and I started a Philosophy class for talk part.
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| Nice question,
I remember the only thing to overtake the nervousness was of think of how the class would help the students...and that thought worked. It was a good class...all beginners...me too at teaching.
Hari Om
Soul |
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| Honestly I don't recall much. I know where and so forth. I do recall a lot of perspiration; by the teacher not the students. But I was already comfortable in from of students and bodies from coaching on the hardwoods so I didn't have any axiety of being in front of folks.
Frankly, as I look back, I didn't teach much. So how much could I screw up. A lot I suppose.
Hopefully no one got hurt.
As for performing, it is possible to fall into that but I'm constantly advised by my current teacher to not perform and to avoid performance but rather to teach by connecting to the heart center. And for clarification purposes this is AFTER thorough training, not when exiting the womb.
Edited by purnayoga 2007-05-11 2:33 AM
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| Hi Rachel,
Thanks for the question. I started teaching with a single student when he insisted. I had (rightly) never allowed myself to think that I knew enough to share at the time. Having been through chiropractic training, I was adverse to giving inaccurate information. But he insisted and generously offered to pay me my professional rate per hour for one-on-one training. In some real way (to me), this person was the teacher and I was the student. He taught me that what I had learned was partly about yogasana, but also about my whole life experience and what I had learned about being a person. Briefly, that from suffering comes compassion, and from compassion comes the energy to help others, God willing. From there, I took on other students but on a face-to-face basis only. Yogasana was the medium, but life was the lesson.
I didn't teach a public class until after 9/11. By then I realized that, as SCT reminds us, we are all still learning and that time was of the essence. We need to share who we are with one another if we are to avoid unthinkable reprisals. The human community is struggling with the same things we as individuals have struggled with. To the extent that we can assist with the next step of learning who we are as interconnected humans, we can be of some humble help. It is love for one another, for each of us and all of us, and for the Mystery that surrounds us, that prompts us to reveal ourself, to teach.
My first teaching experience was with one of my guiding angels and I will be forever grateful to him.
Michael |
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| I'm sure I had flop sweat...Like the movie "Network."
I remember doing stick figure drawing for all the postures. I didn't know any sanskirt names at all.
I basically took what I liked and could do from my teachers and taught that. I used to always start in Sukasana. My wife gave me these flash cards and I took the ones I wanted to use and created a sequence. Sometimes I go back to these sequences, refine them and use them today. Sometimes, I look at them and think, what was I thinking?
In the beginning of my teaching, I used be really gentle and I created a nice gentle sequence, but I didn't really understand what I was doing. People came back..whew..I'm glad I don't have to start over and there were no video cameras. I was under-prepared for sure...
Yoga was hard work, but things came pretty easy to me. So, I had to find a balance between the way I learned and the best way to teach what I learned. I noticed that people like to be challenged, but not overwhelmed, and when the class was too easy, people lost interest. I did not teach power or ashtanga for about a year. As, I learned more, I taught more.
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Expert Yogi
Posts: 8442
    
| We do a really gradual introduction - first we teach one pose in our mentor's class, then a couple, then more, so I am not really sure of my first class. I do remember teaching ardha uttanasana with hands on the wall and telling the students to keep their head between their ears   On the down side, somewhere in the first year I spent considerable time in savasana talking about death and felt bad later as I realised one student was there trying to recover from a traumatic family death. Later still, another student told me she had been in chemo the whole term - that one I didn't know about. But I figure those people were in that class for a reason. I can't always know (and probably shouldn't) or try to avoid important topics because of things I can't control.
Yes, sometimes I do feel like a performer. Some days I don't feel like teaching. But I have commitments and duties and those days I go to class, summon up a smile and teach the best class I can. They are rare days, but if I had a lot of them, I would reconsider the whole teaching thing. |
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| I was as nervous as a cat on a hot tin roof. I practiced the specific sequences at home for about week before my first class, and I practiced my cueing while driving in the car.  I have little doubt it was a disaster.
As for feeling like a performer, not really. I'm just doing my thing with people who want to do it with me. |
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How was your first teaching..
