This blog is going to be about my journey towards becoming a yoga teacher, something I have been thinking about for a while. I'm not planning to start training for another year, and am keen to develop and deepen my practice in the interim now I have committed to this choice. So, what better place to start than by looking back at experience gained to date?
I started yoga back in 2010, I think. I can't remember exactly when, but I remember that I started taking hatha classes with a teacher called Katrin Heuser in Forest Hill. She ran a practice called Yoga Gestalten. I can't remember how I found her - I lived nowhere near Forest Hill - but I remember that I would traipse over there after work, do a great class, and then traipse back home. By the time I got home, the zenny buzz that her classes gave me was long gone. She lives in Portugal now, lucky lady, and I do hope to see her again one day.
I remember taking a wonderful yoga and meditation day with her and a woman called Maggie Richards (of Meditation with Maggie) in Dulwich in the summer of 2011. The yoga was tough and the meditation transcendental - I felt like I was on drugs (not that I actually know what they're like to be on) just from sitting against a wall and letting my mind go.
I kept taking classes with her until I had a really appalling bike accident in late 2011. I hurt my mouth really badly and had severe whiplash that precluded me from turning my head, bending very far forward, and so on. I started having tons of physio and swam when I could, and at some point I decided that yoga would probably help - I was so immobile and crippled. I started taking classes in 2012 at a place close to me called The Yoga Hutch. I took hatha classes from a teacher called Sarah Vaughan, who is really fantastic. Super knowledgeable, very kind, and good fun! Sarah's tuition helped me regain my flexibility - I can touch my head to my toes (with my legs in a diamond shape!) again because of her. Post-accident I could barely lean forward.
However, much as I was loving the classes at the Hutch, I kept twanging my back for unknown reasons, and having to take breaks. Even with physio, I wasn't able to sustain it. With regret, after one particular injury at the end of 2013, I stopped, although I did take some very occasional gentle yoga classes at the gym in 2014-16.
From quite early on, my physio had advised I take Pilates to build my core strength - this was basically the problem. I had no idea about it and how to use it properly to prevent injury. As Sarah told me recently, 'you just flip forward using your hips, you need to use your core and pelvic floor and see the difference that makes'.
For me, Pilates was a revelation. Within a month of taking it, I could feel the difference. Even now, if I don't take it semi-regularly, my back can really feel it - people equate it with yoga but it's really not. Some of the moves are the same but the intentions are completely different, and there are a lot of differences! I'm surprised t's still not so well known, which is crazy, because it is the most incredibly useful exercise class. It will build your strength and keep you strong! It did all of that for me. I started taking other strength classes like Body Pump, while maintaining a gentle home practice to Youtube videos, and then, at the end of 2016, I finally felt ready to come back to yoga classes.
I knew I couldn't make the ones at the gym, so what else? Luckily for me, my workplace started holding 'employee wellbeing' yoga sessions. Just £5 for a power flow class one lunchtime and a vinyasa flow class after work later in the week. I joined in and immediately fell in professional adoration with my teacher, Tammy Frazer. She's funny, fierce and powerful, doesn't take life too seriously and her yin/yang style really suits me down to the ground. Of course these classes aren't quite normal ones - lunchtime is just 45 minutes, after work is an hour (but we get to do yin, so <3) but they were the stimulus for my shift. She's amazing!
I'll talk more about the whys and wherefores in other posts, but for now, I've gone back to The Yoga Hutch and started taking tough ashtanga flow classes with Sarah, will be attending yin and restorative classes and hopefully getting to understand mysore in the next year, have tried blindfolded yoga through a yoga teacher friend, have booked myself onto a number of workshops at YogaCampus and Triyoga (focused on anatomy and yoga, as well as restorative inversions, am working on ensuring I have a consistent home practice, and am just trying to immerse myself as much as possible.
There's a long way to go from here...