Day 1 - Teacher Training

First class with Daren... Hit some unexpected bumps over the course of the day, which I suppose were to be expected, but they caught me by surprise. Upon being asked to teach basic anapana breathing I froze up, like a deer in headlights, and ran out of cues and couldn't find anything to say after about ten seconds... It was really disconcerting, how paralyzed and unsure of myself I was. Wanted to sound intelligent, or maybe unique, which is totally not the function of a yoga teacher at all... No one needs a genius to walk them through a class, what they need is simple, clear, and direct guidance... My recurring problems over the course of the day got me thinking about how very rarely I manage to be direct in my communication... My life in recent years has been an elaborate facade of evasion and silence, and I rarely if ever say exactly what I'm thinking. Such is the life of a manipulative youngest child, who came of age as an angry Muslim man in a paranoid post-911 America. I've cultivated silence over the last few years, and put my speech on a perpetual lockdown, for fear of saying the wrong thing, or being misunderstood. Truth be told, I've been accused by loved ones and poets of being profligate with words, tossing language around carelessly, to the point where larger messages get lost in the contrived artistry i create stringing words together. So I've learned restraint, by necessity, after sending unforgivable e-mails to ex-lovers and hurtful screeds to friends. You grow up after awhile, and learn to control the impulse to express by holding it in... Because if you don't have anything good to say, there's really no reason to inflict it on someone. In recent years I've tried to cultivate the "walk softly and carry a big stick," and only in certain company do I really feel comfortable enough to air out my thoughts... So today caught me off guard, and as I struggled to find words to explain a simple breathing technique to a partner, I realized how fundamentally this training is going to change me. No more evasions...no more silence. Simple, clear, direct communication, without superfluous dressings. That's a sea change for me, and will require practice...

We did some simple adjustments with partners as well, and reviewed down dog from a dozen different angles. It's amazing how something so familiar can suddenly feel brand new, once you're exposed to a few little things you can do differently to optimize the energy flow in a particular asana. I realizing where my release valves are... Finished up the first chapter of Gary Kraftsow's book on the way to class, and the whole concept of "release valves" really struck a nerve. They're essentially compensatory mechanisms that people employ to get themselves through poses... everyone, in some form or another, has ways to cheat in poses, in ways that overcompensate or manage to sabotage the essential benefit of a particular asana. While reviewing down dog today, I realized my personal checklist for the pose manages to completely ignore some of the core purposes for doing the pose in the first place... Move one set of bones in one manner, and it automatically moves another set of bones out place... An eye-opening realization, but one which is going to take quite some time to fully appreciate and address... Considering how many release valves I can find for just Down Dog, and considering how many poses exist, I can see this taking up the rest of my life... I suppose that's one of the points of this training, to learn to identify the obstacles on the way to growth. Seeing them is the first step to setting them straight...