The joys of individualized yoga

After years of teaching classroom yoga, I'm finding that stretching my wings into teaching private sessions is really an amazing thing. I love teaching classes - big classes, full of energy and lots of people working together! I love it! But teaching individuals is altogether different and requires a big shift in focus. I had two very different private sessions this afternoon, and both absolutely flew in the face of what "a yoga class should be."

For example, one client wants to learn more - she wants to explore. She has a regular practice, doesn't need me for that, so suddenly, here is this marvelous opportunity to PLAY. So we played. We played yoga (which is how they phrase it in Thailand), and her beautiful children came up and played along too. It was wonderful.

My second client came in, and we were about to get started doing postures, when I realized that she wasn't breathing. Not as in she couldn't breathe and needed an ambulance, but that she wasn't really breathing and didn't really know how. In a classroom environment, we would have continued on, and she would have figured out how to breathe later on down the line. Hopefully. But today, instead of trying to do postures, we spent an hour just breathing. She arrived stressed, and left relaxed, and I felt good that we had done yoga.

How much of our stress is due to not breathing! And how much of our stress and not breathing is due to making that choice. I am recognizing in my own life that quite often, when I feel stress, I enjoy it. I prefer it. I don't want my stress to go away, because then what else do I have to cling to? How else can I be unhappy? I can't - I rely upon my stress to keep me safely numbed out and attached, and I choose to forget all of the tools I have at my disposal - breath, yoga, sunshine, good food. When I use those tools, my unhappiness vanishes, my ego suffers, and my soul is liberated.