yoga, throughout my pregnancy

After teaching my very first yoga class I continued to teach for another year, until the birth of my daughter in June 2011. Throughout my pregnancy i practiced and taught weekly and soon began to develop and teach a pre-natal class of my own.

It was while I was pregnant that I deepened a softer approach to my practice.  I had always modified the poses but at this time began to introduce more gentle, rhythmic movements to the stretches so that each pose could be held less statically.  This suited perfectly the needs of pregnant women who require a longer warm up to prepare their bodies for movement. Warming up the spine and pelvic floor with rhythm and flow helps send energy throughout the body.  Less static stretching helps prevent problems caused by laxity in joints which occurs in conjunction with pregnancy.

I have learned as much knowledge through my own pregnancy experience as I have gained understanding from my Pre- and Post-Natal Pilates Specialist education.  Above all, the importance of allowing the pregnant body to relax into its own natural alignment and to not encourage pre or post-natal clients to achieve something unnatural to their bodies at this time. This approach helps to create the idea of the pregnant woman taking responsibility for how she feels rather than attempting to accommodate any alignment cues which may feel foreign to her changing body. While this applies to teaching in general, I became especially mindful of applying this to myself.

Vanita Iyenger, "Inner Beauty, Inner Light: Yoga for Pregnant Women".

To provide a little bit of background to my story, my pregnancy followed 4 years of continuing education in Pilates and Vinyasa Yoga wherein I practiced and taught movement daily alongside a dynamic personal repertoire including dance, cycling, running and swimming. I had already completed the first part of Gerard's Advanced Teacher Training Program immediately following 2 years of his initial Vinyasa Teacher Training Program.  I was practicing yoga in his studio, at home, anywhere and everywhere while traveling and I had begun teaching it too.  I continued to practice level 3 Vinyasa yoga with Gerard through to my 7th month of pregnancy and I was reading Inner Beauty, Inner Light: Yoga for Pregnant Women by Frederick Leboyer. The book features BKS Iyengar's daughter Vanita in her daily practice a few short days before she gave birth.  Leboyer shows, with his own photographs, Vanita in various poses including Sirsana, the headstand, while 9 months pregnant (shown above).

I was intrigued when i first saw the image.  Then, as my own pregnancy grew confidently and as I continued to practice dynamic movement daily, I became inspired.  Movement had played a pivotal role in my personal fulfillment before my pregnancy and it played a vital role throughout my pregnancy.  My personal practice kept me in a regular dialogue with my body in varying depths of 'samadhi' on a day to day basis.  For me, simply being pregnant lent itself towards a deepened state of connection between my mind and body.  Deepening this connection with my movement practices encouraged me to listen. Listening to my body initiated my journey towards a home birth which began when I was 6 months into term. I was inspired by the pictures taken of a friend of a friend, moments after giving birth, in her own home. The mother's face was radiant, the baby was calm.  I didn't know this person at all but we had one interest in common.  Yoga. We both practiced it and taught it.

At 7 and a half months into my pregnancy term, I decided that I would practice Sirsana myself if I felt the calling.   During an extended level 3 Vinyasa session with Gerard, almost an hour and a quarter into the session, my body was radiating with warmth from the sequence of poses and sun salutations.  It was time to practice the inverted poses. I felt strong and ready to explore my own ability.  And did not want to think about it much more.  I trusted how I felt and I prepared for the pose.  I practiced Sirsana.  I did not stay in the pose for a long time- long enough to find my balance, explore what was required to sustain my body weight, and to discover my new relationship with gravity.  I am not sure that I would describe my experience as samadhi and I know that I would not recommend the pose to an equally pregnant débutante.  But while I have no idea if i looked anywhere near as balanced and serene as Vanita does in the photo above, I do remember feeling it.  If I was a poser for a minute, I was poised for at least a second.

My homebirth experience was a whole new dimension of samadhi.  It was at once the most selfless and self-centered acts I have chosen to do in my life. And it is the richest gift I will ever bestow upon myself and my daughter. I chose to give birth in an environment that would give me the greatest possible chance of pursuing samadhi.  And it was with the feeling of being completely centered that i gave birth naturally to my healthy baby girl, at home. This still point was my gift to her, so that she may always have it as her point of reference for life and throughout life.

For 'except for the point, the still point, there would be no dance, and there is only the dance" - TS Eliot.

Samadhi

My teacher Gerard once said something that resonates strongly within me, describing at once how yoga makes me feel and why i practice yoga.  He said during one of our workshops that the most challenging of all yoga poses we would ever experience would be sitting in stillness for meditation.  Padmasana, the lotus pose, is one of these traditional seated 'asanas' originating in the meditative practices of ancient India. The asana is said to resemble a lotus, encourage appropriate breathing and foster physical stability.

I have since often heard myself describe the final, universal objective of yoga to be 'stillness'. This describes in very few words, a feeling that is otherwise very challenging to explain - the feeling of being perfectly centered, or samadhi.

samadhi is, in the yoga tradition, the eighth and final limb identified in the Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali.  It has been described as a non-dualistic state of consciousness in which the consciousness of the experiencing subject becomes one with the experienced object, and in which the mind becomes still, one-pointed or concentrated while the person remains conscious.

People often find certain yoga poses to be challenging due to their self perception of their physical inflexibility or lack of suppleness. I enjoy sharing Gerard's simple suggestion to illustrate that the poses are a pathway towards a greater objective, and to suggest that the poses are not the objective themselves but rather a passage or experience.  The poses are the actions that we practice, from the basic beginner postures through to the most challenging, advanced versions to prepare ourselves to sit.  To sit and breathe freely and to source stability from a physical lightness is a state of being, the poses are our journey.

This is my first memoir entry since May 2010.  In my next entry I will pick up from where i left off almost 3 years ago to continue sharing my own journey with samadhi, Yoga and Me.

Namaste.

5 steps towards teaching my first yoga class

1.  create an opportunity.

thanks to my fellow yogi, pilates teacher & constant source of movement inspiration kelly 's encouragement, i have finally plucked the courage to volunteer to teach his vinyasa yoga class this wednesday, during his absence.

2.  practice the postures.

i have maintained a regular yoga practice of roughly 4 hours each week in the past 3 to integrate the movement principles into my body.

3.  practice teaching.

until now, i have only taught yoga to enthused pilatistas as a part of my warm up and warm down activity within my pilates classes. thanks to gerard's impromptu round robin teaching practice session that took place during this past weekend's workshops, i have finally taught my first 15 minutes of vinyasa yoga to a class of yogis.  it was a very different experience.  teaching in what i can only describe as a yogic environment in terms of space, ambience and student objectives, those 15 minutes served to clarify for me the distinct shift between teaching biomechanical efficiency and guiding a room full of individuals along their personal yogic journeys.  the round robin feedback session proved to be rich and insightful.  i left the workshop feeling samadhi, feeling perfectly centred, having found yoga on the subject of teaching, clarity on what i want to obtain.

4. prepare the class.

5. teach yoga.