married with yoga

I got officially hitched this weekend!!  The reason I say “officially” is because my husband and I had a private ceremony last year in which we exchanged rings and vows – it was sweet and wonderful, but we never turned in our paperwork – we were having aversion to the whole “legal: love-not-defined-by-the-state” thing.  So we did it the old fashioned way – going into the woods and exchanging ‘favors’ (no, not that kind! I’m talking about rings!).  However, in the past year, due to a series of events, thoughts, surrenders, and inconveniences, we decided, “what the hell, let’s get legal!”  We’d planned on carving out a weekend in February, but then we remembered that this was a 3-day weekend.  So, we decided to go for it (that was Thursday night).  We had our friend in Santa Barbara become ordained on Friday, we picked up our marriage license that afternoon, took Kane to his basketball game on Saturday at three, came home, showered and drove to Santa Barbara.  We were married on Sunday afternoon on a beautiful beach, right before a wild storm blew in; just B and I, with K, our friend “the minister” and his fiance (our photographer).  Five people on an otherwise deserted, rainy beach.  It was awesome and perfect.

On our way home on Monday (MLK day), a teacher from the yoga studio called and asked me to teach the 7:15 yang/yin class.  I let her know that we were driving home from SB in a deluge of rain, and that under normal circumstances I’d be home in time – but I wasn’t sure what the traffic would be like, or how slow we’d have to go due to the storm.  She said to keep her posted.  Hours later, the rain had abated and we were making great time, so I checked to see if the class had been covered.  It hadn’t been, so I offered to teach it.

I ‘planned’ the class over the next 3.5 hours while sitting in the cramped front seat of our Jeep.  I wanted to try to stay within the parameters of what people would expect from ‘Yang/Yin’ so I planned according to what I might have expected (biased as it may have been).  I read this recently and it fits in with my yin/yang stereotype: “Yin is the stable, unmoving, hidden aspect of things; yang is the changing, moving, revealing aspect. Other yin-yang polarities include cold-hot, down-up, calm-excited.” (here’s the full article).

Yang is much more difficult for me to plan than Yin.  Lately, I am more drawn to a yin practice, which means I probably need to challenge myself to practice and befriend the yang.  Either way, I had a plan, and just enough time when I got home to read over some notes and choose some poetry for the yin time.  In hindsight, I probably should have spend the time to Ground, to meditate and breathe.

I arrived to the class feeling ungrounded and not as well prepared as I had been for my first solo teach, which made the nerves a more difficult contender – I can only hope that (as in training) I was able to mask it well.  The class passed quickly, with the yang part feeling more forced (the nature of yang?) and the yin portion feeling much more kind and gentle and natural.

In hindsight, I would have done things a little differently if I had been more present: I would have lightened up on the yang (It feels unnatural to be so damn demanding, and the students looked like they could have used some lightening up, but I stuck to the ‘plan’), I would have taken more time to ground and settle in (for myself and the class), and I would have been more open to flexibility within the class (rather than feeling like the class needed to be defined by its title).  Too many hard lines, but I learned some lessons . . .

For me: always take time before class to ground, settle, meditate/breathe.  Remember that teaching yoga is a conversation, listen to your people and respond.  Openness, Flexibility, and Kindness are benefits to teaching and to life – fear gets in the way of these things (can you tell I’ve been reading some Pema Chodron?).  Being prepared alleviates much of the fear.

I could go on, but I’ll leave it at that.

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