Old Moon Yoga

No Warriors in this class

“No Warriors” was her reply. Occasionally I like to start a class by finding everyone’s favorite pose and then build a class incorporating them all. “wow that’s clever” I hear my reader saying to themselves, or may be it’s “that’s lazy why doesn’t he plan the class ahead of time.” Building a class around people’s favorite poses has lots of advantages.

As everyone arrives and gets settled I greet them and ask them their favorite pose. Not challenged enough just trying to put a name to each face, something I am really bad at, I like to compound the problem by adding a favorite pose to each Yogi too. Like bad variety act stage show, I “work the crowd” accumulating names and poses as I go down the line.

If I can’t remember names why make the problem worse by adding poses too? It turns out that it actually makes it easier to remember people’s names. The stage performer does something very similar when “working” his crowd. It is a well known trick for remembering a list of items of course, to associate a picture with each object you are trying to remember.

30 names and poses to remember!

There are other advantages too. I get to say more than hi to everyone in the class. I get to learn what people like, and more often than not, what they don’t like. These are both great pieces of information to have. People usually don’t like the poses they most need. Poses they like are usually ones they have been working on or are trying to perfect, or poses that just make them feel good.

Asking everyone hopefully makes it seems like a class more tailored to them, rather than something pre-canned class and driven from a cheat sheet, with no consideration for the Yogis who turn up. After all they have no idea that all the classes we teach are modified to suit the group.

Indirectly I learn whether people think in terms of Sanskrit or English for the pose names. Also hidden in there are clues to what they like about the class.

So hopefully everyone feels wanted, unless of course I forget to do one of the favorite requests:) It turns out it is not that hard to teach a class this way. Most request are for popular poses that one of my regular sequences would bring out anyway. If someone comes up with something unusual – “I want to do compass pose today” she announced as she was setting up her mat. Good job she did not use the sanskrit to describe that pose, I have no idea what it is – It is easy to remember the one that stands out, you can even build a sequence that leads to it.

I have tried this on groups as large as 20+ it still works. Many people have the same favorites. The fun starts when one person asks for a pose, and another asks not to do that pose. For some reason when you ask people for any special request they are just as likely to tell you what they don’t want. There is probably some deep psychological meaning here. “I am replying with what I don’t like it because my subconscious thinks my body needs it.” or “I come to this class for the torture, I might as well go all in.” Yes this is why I did not take up psychiatry.

Parivrtta Surya Yantrasana (Compass Pose)

So just remember, be careful what you ask for. “What is your favorite pose? “ and not “Any special requests today?” Unless you want the challenge of teaching class with “No warriors” but with Parivrtta Surya Yantrasana thrown in there somewhere.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 10th, 2010 at 9:27 am and is filed under Ramblings. 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.