When I walked into the studio on Monday to teach the 60 minute Vinyasa Flow at Cornerstone Yoga Collective, I have to be honest, I didn’t really feel any inspiration. After the class was over I felt confident that I had taught a strong flow, but as a teacher it’s a different feeling when you walk out of the studio after teaching a class that you really had no vision for, compared to when you know exactly what journey you wanted to take your students on for that hour or so that you share together. The students probably don’t notice either way and in some cases could end up liking the class that you thought was lacking more than the class that you had put a lot of thought and heart into. In the end if you are a teacher, what keeps you coming back to the front of the classroom is the high you get after leading a class through a flow that you felt was purposeful.
My inspiration didn’t end up coming to me until later in the week, after listening to multiple podcasts and starting a new bundle by Ashley Galvin called Body Strong, available on Codyapp. Something really stuck with me that I heard in a podcasts. I don’t remember which podcast it was, or who was being interviewed, I just remember that moment when I finally knew what I was going to frame my classes around for the rest of the week. The gist of what was said in the podcast was that as teachers we can’t always give the students exactly what they want, we can’t take them out of a pose just because they look like the want to kill you in that moment. We will never help them grow as a student if we give them the easy way out. I realized I was guilty of that, if my students ever gave me the death glare I would always transition them out of the pose and move on to the next one. This week I did the opposite, all my classes had the theme of “challenge”, I mixed in some uncomfortably long holds with a really basic flow and some new dynamic movements that were taken from Ashley Galvin’s videos I had been doing. I had so much fun teaching these classes and felt that I had a positive impact on the students that attended, even if in the moment they hated me for pushing them mentally and physically. They were not extremely creative classes when it came to the choreography of the flow, and we didn’t do any fancy poses, but we all worked towards growing stronger. Me, in the sense of getting rid of that need to always appease my students, and my students in their planks and Warrior 2.
The feeling of teaching a class with a theme that you really believe in is unbeatable and is why I keep coming back to the front of the classroom. Now to find my source of inspiration for next week. 🙂
