29.5.2008

Always a surprise with John

This teacher training is turning out to be so much more than just learning to teach yoga. Especially when seeing john so inspired, so playful, so joyful and philosophical. He is becoming the Shakespeare of yoga. Often we have no idea what he's doing with us in the self practise class until later on he explains his logic behind it. Our homework the other night was to make a list of the areas we wanted to work on in our practise and actually each day choosing a theme and playing with it. He often encourages one breath continuous vinyasa flow, he will get us to practise with reverse breath to leave our comfort zones or do the most fun things we can on our mat. His philosophy is that the practise is our friend so be joyful everyday when you meet that friend, be playful…

And yesterday he did just that with us. Interesting thing was that we were pretty emotional afterwards because of his touch. He worked some people in getting them to learn to adjust themselves in the poses as they may not have teachers at home, Scott was getting worked hard with his jump backs and jump throughs and felt that he completely had to surrender to John because it was pretty exhausting, I got challenged with my breath and core strength as John now made hand stands a must in my practise…And just as he says it this practise is like a glass, it mirrors so many emotions within us, hence this week has been a lot of crying and releasing whatever we have been holding within ourselves.

I had to face again the fear and insecurities every time he turned me upside down. Everyone refers to this teacher training as being in a washing machine and getting spinned pretty fast. But at the same time we like it, it would have taken us much longer to work with our minds, our breath and our bodies had we not been here. And it is the most supportive environment. Lucy is there to work with anything that arises in the body. I had my back release 2 weeks ago, someone managed to shift their pain in their hip, another knee…And swami is there to work with our minds and emotions, and we just had David arrive our anatomy teacher. His knowledge is pretty vast in the field and being a practitioner himself we can get a good perspective on safety.

I feel that my faith in the practise is deepening, as well as the path of yoga becoming more assuring. As John always refers to it "one body, one breath, one mind and one consciousness"…