Laura Erdman-Luntz, MA, E-RYT(500) | Yoga | Yoga Teacher Training | Minnesota | Costa Rica | Life Coaching

Managing Your Hats as a Business Woman & Yogi

 

(Here is an article I wrote for Teachasana.com.  Want to read more?  Click on the link.)  

Have a few balls in the air?  Don’t we all!  But do not despair, you can do it. We are wives, mothers, business-owners, yoginis, teachers, friends, daughters.  We have blogs, websites, emails, texts, phone calls, social media to keep up with, classes to teach with full attention, and, oh, yeah, time to connect with ourselves is in there somewhere, too! Our lives are busy and full to the brim.  So, how do we do it all? I have three ideas to help you.

Managing Your Hats as a Business Woman & Yogi

 

A Thought for Yoga Teachers: Sometimes you need to stay on your mat

Here's me.  Smiling and present, but in the front of the room, on my mat, not walking around or adjusting anyone.  I have those days.  We all do.  And learning to honor those days is a powerful step toward becoming an intuitive teacher who can also honor your own needs.

One of my teachers once said she has a rating system she keeps.  It is based on a scale from 1-10 with 1 indicating she feels simply awful, negative, and icky and ten indicating she feels fabulous.  She said she is careful who she "infects" whenever she is a 6 or below and sequesters herself whenever she is below a 4.  

I use this rating for myself when I am teaching.  When I am a 8+, I am all over the class, adjusting, assisting, being in my students space and guiding them.  When I am a 6-7, I will walk around, but not adjust.  When I am a 5, I keep my energy to myself on my mat so as not to "infect" the others.  When I am a 4 or below, I send my husband to teach my class for me.

Now, understand, this is not a conscious rating.  I don't think "Hmmm...where am I on the scale tonight?  I think I will need to stay on my mat."  It is all very unconscious, my intuition working to protect both my students and me.  I will walk out of class realizing I didn't leave my mat and instantly know why.  

So, why am I telling you?  Well, first of all, in case you are like me and judge yourself when you have a class when you are not "perfect".  In the past, I would have harangued myself for not adjusting students, feeling I had cheated them out of the assistance.  Thankfully I don't dwell on that set of waste of time thoughts anymore.  (After about 13,000 hours of teaching, one would hope not.  BUT truth be told, those judgments lasted much longer than you would think.)

Second of all, if you have ever been told that a good yoga teacher has to walk around to adjust all the time OR a good teacher has to stay on your mat all the time demonstrating, I want you to know there is another view.  If you feel you have to do one or the other all the time, at best you are doing a disservice to yourself and your students at worst you are violating our most sacred tenet: ahimsa (nonviolence). Somedays you won't feel up to walking around and to make yourself do so is to harm your students with your energy AND harm yourself!  At the same time, if you never walk around when you are in a good space, you are cheating your students from sharing your lovely energy. (I am a firm believe in adjusting our students.  You can read more here: Assisting Part I: What's the point?)

Honor where you are.  Trust me, your students won't even notice!

You may also enjoy...

Assisting Part I: What's the point?

Assisting Part II: It's not all it's cracked up to be

Assisting Part III: The Conscoius Adjuster

 

Feel Your Chi Flow Through Janu Sirsasana (Head of the Knee Pose)

Check out this new video from my husband, Ron Erdman-Luntz, on feeling the chi flow through your yoga poses.  This pose is Janu Sirsasana.  Stay tuned, we will be releasing a new video every month.  

 

Yoga Pose of the Month on Musasana: Janu Sirsasana (Head to Knee Pose)

    

(Check out the Yoga pose of the month on my other blog: www.Musasana.com):  Let's study Janu Sirsasana (Head of the Knee Pose) this month.  Take this month to spend time in this pose, teach it to your students, bring it into your practice, and bring on a deeper sense of reflection on it.  Here are some ideas for you to consider:

Read More here

Check out the two videos on deepening this pose!

If you are a teacher, challenge yourself to teach this pose in each class this month.  Add this component:  Can you find something new to teach (and learn)?

 

Creating Time to Expand Your Business

Here are a few thoughts around creating time to expand your business -- and making that time productive.

 

 

The Best Teachers...

For all you teachers out there (and aren't we all!)...

Yoga Teachers: Honor Our Student's Reality (and hold the door open...)

We all have beliefs about our bodies. (And beliefs, by the way, are just an opinion, a thought, that we have held for a very long time. Read more about them here.) We may see ourselves as flexible, tight, injured, weak, strong, unable to go upside down, unable to balance, etc. My guess is if you sit for a moment you will come up with half a dozen beliefs you have about your own body. What is most interesting about our beliefs is others usually see through them before we do. And, as teachers, we often see that our students are capable of so much more than they think they are.

As teachers we need to honor other people’s realities and at the same time, hold the door open for something more. Beliefs create the reality in the body, not the other way around. If you think you are tight, you will be tight. If you think you can’t do a handstand, guess what? You’re right! We can best help our students by first helping the student feel safe by honoring what they think about their body. I think we have all experienced at one time or another a teacher who led us to feel less than or even stupid by not understanding what he/she was trying to teach us because we weren’t ready or were still too mired in our belief and so still afraid to try. We need to be there with the student in the place the student is, not where we want the student to be.

Then, at the same time, you can hold the door for the student for something more. You can gently guide them to use different language to describe their body, to see that anything can change, that they are capable of anything. Gently remind them they are strong enough, flexible enough, whatever. Then they will fly!

 

Related Posts:

• Releasing Old Beliefs in Your Yoga Class

• Decluttering: Part One (Beliefs) 

• Decluttering: Part Two (Yoga)

Study Points for the Yoga Pose of the Month: Virasana (Hero's Pose)

Virasana (Hero's Pose)

It's a new month so let's study a new pose!  Check out my other blog, Musasana, to study one yoga pose a month.

Yoga pose of the month:  Let's study Virasana (Hero's  Pose) this month.  Take this month to spend time in this pose, teach it to your students, bring it into your practice, and bring on a deeper sense of reflection this season. 

 

Check out this post for the study points.

Check out this video for ways to deepen this post.

If you are a teacher, challenge yourself to teach this pose in each class this month.  Add this component:  Can you find something new to teach (and learn)?

 

One Yogini's Thoughts: When you don't like a pose

(Post from my other blog, Musasana. On it, I study one yoga pose a month and November was Parivrtta Trikonasana. Check out my other posts on the topic.)

Revolved Trikonasana is my least favorite pose.  There, I said it.  As a teacher I try not to share my opinions of poses so my students can decide for themselves with no influence what a pose is like in their own body.  When it comes to this pose, though, I must admit, I cannot hide my distaste.  My body in this pose feels like fingernails on a chalkboard.  

In other words, this pose is my very best teacher right now.  

We avoid discomfort, moving away from it in our lives.  Sometimes that is appropriate.  Sometimes we need to move away to fill ourselves up, to get strong enough to handle whatever the discomfort is.  Eventually we need to dig in, to be present with it, to breathe through it, to see what we need to see to move beyond it.

I have enjoyed this month investigating this pose.  That is not to say I enjoyed being IN the pose, mind you. :-)  I simply enjoyed seeing what it had to teach me, to learn to be fully present while I was in it.  I was ready and it was time.  While I am still not in love with this pose, I have achieved more awareness around it and learned a bit more of what it has to teach me.  May you find the same in your challenging pose!

Assisting Part III: The Conscious Adjuster

In Part I, I discussed the benefits of adjusting. In Part II, the disadvantages. So what is the balance? It is what I call the “Conscious Adjuster”. In conscious adjusting, we don’t just mindlessly walk around the class adjusting every student as we teach. We take a moment (and it only takes a moment the better you get at it) and assess whether the adjustment is necessary and whether it will truly help the student understand the point you are teaching. We don’t adjust for something we aren’t teaching, even if it might be useful. There is nothing more confusing for a student than adjusting the arms when you have been focusing on the feet all night.

The conscious adjuster also uses all three adjusting techniques (voice, light touch, and physical manipulation) with more emphasis on voice and light touch. Voice is telling the student what you want to see and is the best adjustment technique. It takes a great teacher to be able to use their voice that well. Voice is best because the adjustment is then entirely the student’s. She made the movement in her own body and has a better opportunity to be able to replicate it. 

Light touch is another good adjustment technique. In light touch, you use one or two fingers, at most a flat palm. Light touch is good because it will bring attention for the student where you want her attention without adding too much of your own energy. A light touch often wakes up the brain to be able to identify the correct muscle to engage to create the movement so the action is almost entirely the student’s.

Last, but certainly not least, is physical manipulation, when you, the teacher, actually move your student into the position she needs. Although this technique may be all yours, it can get a student out of stuck consciousness place (See Part I) so it is definitely useful sometimes.