Old Moon Yoga

I am teaching my beginner class, everyone is watching me closely. They watch every move as we take Virabhadrasana I (Warrior I Pose).  Once in the pose I straighten up to walk around the class. The class straightens up with me. I squat back down in the pose. Frozen unable to move,  every movement every motion I make is mimicked by my class. It’s at this point that the feeling starts.

My right ear is desperately needs a scratch. The more I think about it the itchier it becomes. I need to stick my finger my ear. How can I do that with a room full of students watching my every move? It will look like a group audition for an early Jim Carrie movie.

If only this was a level II-III class. Whole sequences of poses can be reduced to a single word. “Vinyasa”, I command and the whole class cycles through the well understood sequence. Some are even cycling through with their eyes shut.

How do we, as Yogis progress from watching every movement listen to every word to blind folded serenity?

Another class now, any class is does not matter, everyone is facing me, “raise your left leg” I say as I raise mine to demonstrate. “no other left” I joke as a couple of people raise their right.  Later in the class it’s time for Gomukhasana (Cow Face Pose) “The right arm goes up the left down”.  Confusion, why is this so hard. Is it my British accent again? There is always one who twists the wrong way, always. It’s great fun of course, gives me a chance to pick on someone and even threaten to sing the Sesame Street song. Everyone knows their left from their right, what is going on here?

People learn in three different ways.

• Verbal or instruction
• Visual or demonstration
• Tactile or touching and adjustment.

We all have different capacities to learn in each of these modes.  Some people, me included, and even some extremely bright people, cannot learn effectively through verbal instruction. “Rotate your left leg inwards.” the instructor might as well be speaking Martian to me.  I stare, eyes fixed on her trying to figure out, what “left leg inwards” means. I grab an appropriate leg, at least I think it is, it is one of mine, and manually try to twist it somehow.  “It’s more a feeling that a real movement” she continues. What! How am I supposed to see a feeling? She can see my feeling it is all over my face. “Now inner spiral the …..” ok that’s me done.

Clearly as teachers we have to cater to all kinds of learning traits. If someone in the class is not a verbal learner, standing up the front calling out instruction is not going to be terribly effective. So how should I teach Utthita Trikonasana (Extended Triangle Pose) to this mixed bag of learners?

Verbal.

I begin “Triangles have straight side”. What is this kindergarten? May be I should not be so condescending but clearly at least 3 people don’t get it. “legs spread wide pull up on the knee caps, to straighten the legs”  Reinforcement of the straight legs that ought to do it. Now the tricky part, “you need to stack you hips, one on top the other”.  I glance around things are not going well, may be a course in Klingon would help.  There are a lot more words to come of course but I have already lost half the class. It is time to move on and cater to the visual learners.

Visual

I am facing a room of Yogis, mostly women. I have to show them what I mean by stack you hips, it’s crucial to the pose. I turn and face away from the class, breaking the teacher training code right there, but it gets worse.  “Everyone look at my butt” I demand as I attempt to demonstrate a movement a little like “The bump” with wide legs. It’s at this point in the class that my wife arrives, late from work. “oh um err, just trying to help everyone with their visualization dear ”  Perhaps I need to walk among the group and do the pose between the mats, clearly some are just still not getting it. These must be the tactile learners. Time for stage 3

Tactile

“Yes your honor, I was just attempting to show these Yogis how the pose should feel, so it was a necessary part of my job to adjust every butt in the class”.  Adjustments, that delicate area with lawsuits pending, were discussed in my previous blog. Without adjustments how does this huge percentage of the class learn?

Personally, I am a tactile learner and I know this transfers into my teaching. I love adjustments and love to offer adjustments. It’s not about the precise pose; it’s about experiencing the right feeling. Knowing how the pose should feel. If you put weight in the outside edge of your back foot in Utthita Parsvakonasana (Extended Side Angle Pose) you can use it to help tuck your butt under more.  What a lot of words, one quick demonstration and you will feel what I mean and, possibly, never forget.

An experienced class will be like a professional orchestra. The teacher calling out familiar poses and the class moving in unison, some even with eyes closed, feeling their way through. As soon as we get to an unfamiliar pose though it’s all eyes and ears on the instructor and here come those three modes of teaching.

She explains and demonstrates, we watch and listen. Some Yogis learn. Finally she visits us “attention seekers” to adjust us so we can feel what is expected.  This is true for all levels of class of course.

Teaching a true beginner class is like standing before a mirror. Unsure what is Yoga and what is teaching, the students copy every single movement of the instructor. All the rules of teaching apply to this class too, but remember there is one extra one

never pick your nose in a beginner class.

Maybe you already know what kind of learner you are? If not here are a couple of suggestions for finding out. You can read the following boring chart of words I shamelessly copied from another site or you can come to one of my classes and see what happens. Remember if I touch your butt, it’s purely in the interest of education

Check out the chart below, it’s ok to be a bit of all three.

When you..	Visual	Auditory	Kinesthetic & Tactile
Spell	Do you try to see the word?	Do you sound out the word or use a phonetic approach?	Do you write the word down to find if it feels right?
Talk	Do you dislike listening for too long? Do you favor words such as see, picture, and imagine?	Do you enjoy listening but are impatient to talk? Do you use words such as hear, tune, and think?	Do you gesture and use expressive movements? Do you use words such as feel, touch, and hold?
Concentrate	Do you become distracted by untidiness or movement?	Do you become distracted by sounds or noises?	Do you become distracted by activity around you?
Meet someone again	Do you forget names but remember faces or remember where you met?	Do you forget faces but remember names or remember what you talked about?	Do you remember best what you did together?
Contact people on business	Do you prefer direct, face-to-face, personal meetings?	Do you prefer the telephone?	Do you talk with them while walking or participating in an activity?
Read	Do you like descriptive scenes or pause to imagine the actions?	Do you enjoy dialog and conversation or hear the characters talk?	Do you prefer action stories or are not a keen reader?
Do something new at work	Do you like to see demonstrations, diagrams, slides, or posters?	Do you prefer verbal instructions or talking about it with someone else?	Do you prefer to jump right in and try it?
Put something together	Do you look at the directions and the picture?		Do you ignore the directions and figure it out as you go along?
Need help with a computer application	Do you seek out pictures or diagrams?	Do you call the help desk, ask a neighbor, or growl at the computer?	Do you keep trying to do it or try it on another computer?

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 14th, 2009 at 9:11 am and is filed under Lessons, Ramblings, While Teaching. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.