You Cannot Prepare

Went to observe and assist a yoga class for one of my YTT mates' service project when a woman, Stephanie, with vision impairment approached us. A woman that Stephanie knows was looking for a yoga teacher for National Blind Sports Day.

I bellyached about minding my own business and the fact that there are more qualified yoga teachers in this area but after looking up information and seeing the percentage of blind and visually impaired individuals who don't get regular exercise, I agreed to teach. Overall, it just felt meant to be -- seeing that I was out of my normal routine when I met Stephanie and given my love of exercising.

Thankfully, when I reached out to my other classmates, someone else agreed to assist.

National Blind Sports Day was yesterday. I have a certain amount of naivete that works in my favor at times.

Some of the conditions for yoga yesterday:

Newbies

Outdoors

20 people ranging in age from 10 to 65

We ended up not having yoga at the park because there weren't enough staff at the school that hosted the event for some of the staff to be at the park and for others to be at the school. I understood, from a logistics point, why the organizer wanted to have yoga in the park but I'm glad that we ended up practicing in the school's gymnasium because it was a challenging enough class without adding the outdoors.

Back to my naivete...

I prepared for that class but there was no real way to prepare. I'm not sure if I should have even planned a sequence. About a month ago, I watched a video on Yoga Alliance about adaptive yoga with Matthew Sanford and he pretty much said that you cannot prepare your way through an adaptive yoga class. What he said about it being a collaborative process is so true.

What I didn't want to do yesterday was ruin anyone's first yoga experience.

So many thoughts have crossed my mind -- before and after the class. As Jocelyn said, we could have easily used two other teachers and I wondered if I was doing harm by agreeing to teach the class with less than four teachers.

Forgot a few things like offering people an option during savasana. Luckily, Jocelyn's radar was intact and she caught that and offered options.

I'm glad that I took my singing bowls. While I played, Jocelyn provided savasana assists and she went around the room with lavender oil which smelled amazing.

My strategy might not have been the best but my intentions were good and I'm going to give myself a break.  I also think there's that part of me that needs to take chill out a bit and not take things so seriously.

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