Sunday, July 29, 2012

Teaching the Teachers!


It's been a week since graduation, and I finally pulled out my take home tests last night to get started. I had glanced at the first page of questions when we originally received them, and had no stress about them. Well, maybe I should have looked a little harder, cause oops. They're going to take a little bit of time. And I leave on Wednesday for Boston for a few days. I gotta see my lovely girls! Its weird to think that its almost been a full year since Meg's wedding. Time has flown.

It seems almost as recent as last weekend's graduation! Although the past week seemed to CRAWL by. Every day felt like Thursday. But I got more done actually before Thursday than I did the entire two weeks I was gone. I did nothing but eat breathe and sleep yoga studies for 15 days. It didn't even feel like it at the time, but looking at my planner of my to do lists now, holy cow has it stacked up. I don't really mind though, James' teaching style and attitude was worth it to have to catch up on fifteen days right before another week away from home.

I can't say I agreed and liked James' style at first. He liked to "make our brains smoke" by throwing so much at us all at one time, just a little bit over what we felt like we could handle, and then changing the topic to something compeletely new. But after awhile, that really seemed like the best way to do it, because somehow subconsciously we kept processing everything and with practice upon practice in chunks and pieces of the sequencing, we all ended up getting it. And considering some of the people in my class, that was a totally amazing feat. Not that they weren't smart or good learners, it was just ALOT of information to process. And then to do it in front of a room of 20 people that knew EXACTLY how it was SUPPOSED to go, thats a lot of pressure.

Although, I must admit I am shocked at how good our group was. There wasn't really any negativity or eye rolling or people thinking they were better than anyone else. The energy was always positive and encouraging and uplifting, even in times of screw ups and mistakes. And James and Ann were a big part of that too. Even as the instructors, who's job it is to make sure that we know every little piece of information, they made it clear that it was ok to not know everything perfectly right away. Or even right away in that two weeks. Its not something that comes immediately, it takes time and experience, and they were so forgiving in all our little flubs, and when James would critique us he would even ask if we wanted them, because he didn't want us to think that he was insulting us and berating us with mistakes, but we all craved them. We wanted to know what he thought was wrong with our teaches and our ideas and he was open to not just saying what the problems were, but why it was that way, and what we could do to fix them in numerous ways in case one option didn't really fit our personality or style. It was all about us individually and making us be the best we could be in the way and style that we wanted to do it. And it was more motivating and productive than any strict teacher could have ever made us. We wanted to make him happy and wanted to hear what we could do better. He clearly was born to be a teacher of teachers. Striving for the best, but with an open mind that the best might be slightly different than the way he prefers it. You know you aren't going to change the way a 60 year old hippie goes into a headstand, so even though she is wrong, she can succeed in the headstand, so why bother?

His stories were absolutely crazy too. His growing up story alone was enough for me to be fascinated in him, but then to hear about all the different jobs he has continued to do, and the random hobbies and interests and even all the things that he learned from the one that taught HIM all of his yoga knowledge. Absolutely mind blowing. He has infinite knowledge in thee most RANDOM of topics and histories. Im sure he couldn't name a single city of Real Housewives, but he can go into great detail about the 100th Monkey Theory, or the SunEaters, or the buddhist retreat that involves people literally going into meditation for a full year, not eating or drinking ANYTHING, and surviving the experience. Just a wealth of information spurred on by just a seemingly random comment. I loved it. I love that kind of intellect. The amount of notes I took on things i wanted to google and research once I got home is kind of crazy. And most of them completely unyoga related ;-)

And I can't even get into how Ann has been practicing for only five years and is the most impressive yoga practitioner I have ever seen. The progress she has made from not touching her toes to going into handstand scorpion in that short amount of time just is a complete mind boggle. My brain might melt.

I suppose those tests won't fill themselves out just because I'm singing James' praise….

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