You all can imagine the lessons learned after doing something for over 40 years! I started my yoga practice 42 years ago, and I started sharing yoga with others 36 years ago. Now I even offer Power Yoga teacher training. As of writing this blog on 3/23/22, I have led well over 24,000 classes. By the time of your reading this probably many more than that.
Yes, I have learned a lot! And something I like to share during my Power Yoga teacher training is how my body, injuries, and the aging process have shaped my experience. The body I have now is not the same as the body I once had, so obviously I should not expect it to perform the same way. Yet, this is not something I considered when I was younger as I assumed all our bodies responded the same way to exercise. For example, one thing I assumed was if you stretch the same region daily, that region will gain a greater range of motion (i.e., become more flexible). I learned this lesson when I was younger at a time when I had a hamstring injury.
My injured hamstring was not responding to stretching the same way it had before the injury. Believe it or not, stretching was tightening the region. It was like my hamstring region was recoiling tighter in response to the stretching. I now call this protection mode. The truth was that the region was healing from injury and wanted to be left alone yet in my ignorance I kept stretching as my ego didn’t want to lose the “progress” (this is a word that really needs to be examined closely in a teachers training). So, to protect itself from the violence I was unwittingly laying on my hamstrings they were recoiling into a protection mode.
When it comes to wellness, “progress” can’t be measured in quantity. This is how people embedded within the rat race measure progress. We all have boundaries and limitations so when progress is measured by quantity it is unsustainable. If it wasn’t unsustainable Usain Bolt would still be breaking records.
Because of my inexperience, I expected other bodies (my class participants) to respond the same as mine. In other words, “if you use it, it will become stronger and more flexible. These are two words I don’t even like to use anymore! Back in the day, if other bodies weren’t responding the same as mine, I believed that they were not working hard enough or correctly. Of course, I was the “teacher” (I don’t like this word either) and people would believe me. I would be guiding people incorrectly due to my own inexperience.
I have learned so much about what doing yoga “correctly” means! I have learned so much about the uniqueness of all of us and our genetic lineage and life experiences play a large role in our physical make-up and our body’s response to stimuli. Age, injuries, and much more also play a role in our uniqueness. What is “flexible” what is “strong”? These terms are relative to our uniqueness so truthfully, they can’t exist in any objective way. My new words are “tone” and “supple” which come with less pre-conceived assumptions. I keep all of this in mind during my power yoga teacher training. I know that the manner of my speech, the tone of my voice, and the word choice I have when it comes to these experiences are very important.
There is so much so share within a teacher’s training! In my power yoga teacher training, I share many lessons to help others avoid the pitfalls that I have had to go through. I will not describe things here further other than to emphasize how helpful my Teacher Training may be to potential practitioners and aspiring instructors.
I look forward to seeing you in one of my upcoming local or online Power Yoga Teacher Training!
Sincerely,
Bryan Kest
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