Teaching and Learning

Whew…it’s been a crazy two days. I missed out on posting Friday night because I had yoga teacher training until 9 p.m. and then came home to eat a late dinner and then prep for a class I taught this morning. Let’s work into all the details on that. I’ll start with lunch on Friday.

A really tasty grilled cheese with cheddar, provolone, spinach and peach pepper jam on whole wheat sourdough with real butter in a cast iron skillet (the only way to make grilled cheese!). Tomato soup and apples on the side.

I had an unpictured snack of an oatmeal raisin cookie leftover from a meeting at work. I needed a little something to tide me over until my late dinner. Last night at teacher training we just practiced ashtanga and then had discussion about the book Ask and It Is Given. I was brutally honest in my review of the book…I just didn’t love it. I really enjoyed hearing everyone’s take on the book and it was interesting how different everyone’s experience with the book was.

My very sweet husband has taken charge of dinner on Friday nights when I have teacher training.

He came up with all of this on his own! I am so impressed. We had a coupon from Earth Fare for a free “Dinner for Four”  in exchange for signing up for their e-mail list (which I was already a part of because they have awesome deals and coupons all the time!). The free dinner included a whole chicken, mashed potatoes and carrots. He grilled the chicken on the Big Green Egg beer-can style and served it with the mashed potatoes. He decided to make a fun grilled endive salad with gorgonzola and balsamic instead of the carrots. It was all so delicious! After dinner I made my playlist and class plan for a strength training class I was scheduled to teach at 8 a.m. this morning.

My yoga teachers kindly allowed me to miss the morning practice today so that I could teach my class at the Dowd Y. I am on a weekend rotation there and have had to sub my class out for the last few months due to conflicts. I really needed to show up for class today so I didn’t lose my teaching spot. I had so much fun with the class this morning and am really glad I decided to teach it.

I arrived at yoga teacher training just in time for our sanskrit lesson – we have a sanskrit scholar coming for an hour each weekend to teach us the correct pronunciation of all of the yoga terms. How cool!

We had a nice, long lunch break so I came home to enjoy the beautiful weather and dine al fresco with Brandon.

Hummus, avocado, spinach and cheese on Great Harvest Whole Grain Goodness with pears, carrots and crackers. Even more enjoyable when eaten outside with the sun shining. 🙂

We had a fun, hands-on afternoon at teacher training. First, we went over more assists but today’s assists were all about backbends and handstands.

I loved doing all of these assists. It brought me back to my cheerleading days when we all used to spot each other on back handsprings, back tucks, handstands and more.

I actually ended up being partners with the guy who is demoing in these pictures and it was a great challenge to assist of someone who is bigger than me. I felt 100% confident in my assists!

The second thing we did was teach! I loved the exercise we did today – blindfold teaching!

When they told us we would be teaching blindfolded I was interested to see how that would turn out. The result? It was awesome! I was able to totally just visualize what I was telling my partner to do and get into the groove of just saying the things that I know so well and start being myself and actually coaching her through it.

I love all of the different teaching exercises that they are putting us through. I feel like all of this is not only helping to prepare me to be a good yoga teacher but also helping me become a better teacher for all of my classes!

Off to get pizza with Brandon and then crashing. I have an early morning. I’m planning on arriving at the studio early tomorrow to start practicing so that I have time to work on second series too! Back tomorrow with more news.