It’s been nonstop teaching lately and last week I experienced teaching yoga to real people! Not my fellow student teachers, not my family and not my best friend, actual students! Three of us volunteered to take over a fellow second year student’s class for her while she’s away on holiday. We decided to break the class into three parts so we could take turns teaching for 30 minutes each. I was first up teaching the invocation, warm ups and warriors I and II with Sun Salutations. I was nervous, nothing new there, but excited too because I knew this was going to be a very different experience from teaching in front of my peers and teachers. Sitting there on my mat at the front of the class, as I began to speak I couldn’t know if would remember everything I had to say, I had no idea if I was making sense at all, and in the back of my mind I wondered if I might fall flat on my face! A little while later I was in Downward dog I think, and I looked up to see how everyone was doing and suddenly I felt a rush of joy! Finally! Joy was taking the place of fear! Wow! I was so happy I couldn’t stop smiling! I have struggled so much with anxiety while teaching these past six months. I was putting so much pressure on myself to be perfect, even though I tried not to – it’s not easy to change your nature overnight. I told myself again and again to let it go. Now I know that one day I will step on to the mat to teach and there will be no fear. Only confidence and joy – and yoga!
Mediation is definitely helping because the anxiety is transforming each time I teach and I can now manage to keep any panic attacks under control by breathing through them, so things are definitely improving, and that’s ok. Because now I’ve found the joy, the elusive joy that I knew was there, I had seen it in my fellow student teachers. I know that if I continue to step out side my comfort zone and onto the mat to teach, I am staring my fear down, I am completely and utterly present with myself and while it still freaks me out, I am loving it just the same.
I get to do it all again this week!
love & light xo
