Four Ways to Make Your Yoga Class Better for You

I recently started teaching a combined chair and gentle yoga class.  There are many abilities in the class, and it's the most difficult class I have taught, I believe.  I'm trying to satisfy everyone... trying to ensure everyone has a 'good' practice.  I have some students from previous gentle yoga classes who have returned because they like my style.  But this class is different.  So I'm trying to give them the experience they've had before.... yet it's a different class.

Every class will be different anyway.  Because there are different students.  Different moods.  Different energy in the room.  The teacher changes and evolves too.  After two classes, I've decided to stop trying to make the class the 'same' as before.

That said, there are ways to make your yoga class experience better if you feel it's not the experience you wanted.  I think these ideas are valuable for any yoga student in any class.

1. Drop expectations.  We enter into experiences thinking something will be a certain way.  When it is not the way we expected, we can feel disappointed.  Yet, it may have been a most wonderful experience if we did not have an expectation of it in the first place.  Allow the experience to be whatever it may be.
2. Pay attention to your breath.  Yeah, we say this in class over and over.  But if you find yourself judging the class or your self, come back to your breath.  Where do you feel it?  What rhythm does it have?  Does it speed up or slow down during certain poses?  Curiosity of breath will help you tune in to your own experience, rather than your mind being occupied with judgment.
3. Practice body awareness.  No matter what kind of class you are in, movement of your body will result in sensations.  Tune in and identify where in the body you can feel poses, what the sensations are, where your 'edge' is, how your body automatically moves, whether aligned posture is maintained throughout class, if/when you feel unpleasant sensations, etc.  Your practice is your own.  You do not and will not look like others in the class... so stop trying to look like them and find what your own body needs and wants.  That's where you will benefit from the practice most.  The teacher cannot know what you need.  As a student, your practice is to listen.
4. Notice reactions.  When you did not hear the teacher cue/say something, how do you react?  What do you do?  If the pose the teacher is teaching does not feel good, what is your response?  Did you know you do not have to do anything the teacher says?  Do what feels right for you.  Change or adapt if you need to.  If you do not know how to and the teacher is ok with questions, ask.  If it's a class in which distractions are limited or discouraged, simply sit or stand in a relaxing pose until the next teaching is right for you, and ask the teacher after class how you can adapt a pose that is not right for you.

If you are practicing all of these, you will be practicing yoga.  You will be benefiting.  It is when we fall out of these above practices and into judgment that the class then can become a 'bad class'.  Of course, you want a skilled yoga teacher, too.  But if a teacher is qualified, you can still have a beneficial class even if you do not like the teacher by following these four practices.

Namaste,

Tina