Intermediate

Pasasana, "Noose Pose."



(snagged from a Google search)

I'll let you guess why it's called "noose pose."  It's also the first pose the Intermediate Series of Ashtanga.  And my teacher just gave it to me this morning!  She kind of caught me off guard.  I've seen people practicing Intermediate and I know it has a lot of back bends and lotus positions.  I get super light-headed during my drop backs (my teacher took those out a couple of weeks ago so that we can work on that not happening) have a tweaky low back and tweaky knees (my doctor actually thinks I have a "degenerative tear" in the meniscus of my left knee, not enough to cause instability, but enough to cause pain during certain *ahem, lotus* movements).  So, I thought that Intermediate was still a ways off.  Guess not!  I was laying on my back getting ready to do my second set of baby back-bends (just coming up on to the top of my head instead of full Urdhva Dhanurasana) when she walked over and asked if I had done Setu Bandhasana.  I told her I had and she said, "Jump through, Pasasana."  My reaction: "Huh?"  Who, me?  I'm such a geek sometimes, lol.  I knew what Pasasana was but I think I was kind of in disbelief, lol.

Here's a surprise, Pasasana is tricky!  It's not as easy as it looks!  Obviously it's a deep twist, but it's also a balance!  I didn't have any trouble getting my heels on the floor (yay for long Achille's tendons and open calf muscles) and I was able to catch most of the bind (yay for long monkey arms)...until I tipped over.  Kate had to hold me in place.  I think this pose is going to be very entertaining to work with...I forsee lots of me falling on my butt and rolling around, lol.  But I also think it's going to feel amazing.  I tend to get all grippy and tense in my shoulders and that's a pretty big opening that's going on here!  Not to mention, in my practice, I'll have back bends right after this.  And as I learned in teacher training, twists are a GREAT prep for back bending, because they loosen up the spine.  So I think it's really going to help in that area.

The other thing that was kind of cool and unexpected was how the pose felt energetically.  When I got Setu Bandhasana, it felt like a huge opening and I felt like I got this huge energy boost.  Largely because it was a new pose, the end of a series that I had been working on for nearly 2 years and it is indeed a huge opening of the front body, primarily the throat.  Taking savasana that day was actually a challenge!  The energy boost lasted all day long.  Pasasana, in comparison, was sort of anti-climatic.  Possibly because it's actually not the climax, it's a beginning ;-)  Either way, there was some excitement but I was left with a very grounded feeling afterwards.  Which also makes sense, because this is a squat and you're very compact.  So, it seems like not only does this pose prep my body for back bending, but it also feels like it does for my nerves as well because it's so grounding.  Intermediate is also called "Nadi Shodhana," translating as "clearing the energetic channels."  I have a feeling that my practice is about to get very interesting ;-)  I had been practicing the Primary Series for nearly 2 full years (October 26 marks the beginning of my Mysore practice).  Sometimes super consistently (4-6 days a week) sometimes barely 1-2 days a week while I practiced other styles.  Now it is pretty much the only style of yoga that I practice and it feels like home and it's quietly exciting to know that it's about to go to another level.  Thinking about moving into the next series of Ashtanga kind of feels like I did when I practiced Pasasana for the first time this morning; it wasn't a huge struggle of a pose just one that is tricky on very subtle levels.  Moving from Primary to Secondary feels like that, just kind of a quiet step forward.

Last day of Yoga Teacher training (part 1 of 3): the practicum

Fini.  Yesterday, I completed my first 200-hour yoga teacher training.

Today feels kind of surreal--a little bit like it did after I graduated from college; with a "what now?" kind of feeling.  Especially after the day I had yesterday.

Yesterday was the practicum--where we have 5 minutes to teach one pose to the whole group, with our 2 teachers and the teaching assistant watching and critiquing.  Contrary to my usual response to having to teach, I actually felt really confident the day before--when we had to practice teaching it to each other.  I was quite surprised.  It felt natural and easy, I felt calm and oddly confident.  On Sunday morning, that feeling remained.  I even practiced teaching it to a friend of mine who took the same type of training last year and I said something about the pose that she said she never thought of before.  So, I was feeling really good, like I really understood it and had something I wanted to share about it.  The practicum started and I still felt fine.  One by one everyone went up to teach their pose in the sequence.  And little by little, I could feel my nerves rising.  I thought, "No, no, no!  We got this, we're fine!  Breathe, relax the shoulders, we're fine!!" 

Unfortunately, that strategy did not work.  I got up there and I felt like I was a shaking bundle of nerves speaking in a robot voice.  There was an odd sort of calmness too, but only in the sense that it felt "out-of-body," like I wasn't really present.  I walked around, gave the instructions that I had been giving, gave some random adjustments without really "seeing" what I was doing--but I did not feel like I was there, like I wasn't in control of what I was doing.  I believe the technical term for it is "disassociating," which is not an uncommon "escape route" for me.  I finished and Natasha (the primary trainer and the one I had for the first 3 weekends of the training) looked at me and said, "you were nervous, right?"  Yes, I was nervous.  She said, "you love yoga, we all know that.  And you have a 'sweetness' about it.  But you have to find a way to calm your nerves so that can come out when you teach."  There was so much that I didn't say that I should have.  I understood the pose, but I couldn't teach it.  Basically, I was telling people what to do, but not how to do it--and that is what "teaching" means, telling people "how" to do something.  Jennie (the teacher I've had for the last 3 weekends and the one who has seen me do the most practice-teaching) gave her feedback next.  She said that it may not seem like a lot, but she remembered how I was when she first came.  She said that I've gone from inarticulate and barely able to get words out of my mouth, to a robot voice--that's improvement.  The teaching assistant, Tamara, empathized, as an Ashtangi, because our practice is silent, we don't regularly hear "how to do" something.

I appreciated all of it, but I was disappointed in myself.  I had told myself the week or so before hand, that if I just managed to get words out of my mouth that made sense, I would be satisfied.  That was before this past Saturday, when I felt so confident and clear going in.  And yes, I practice a lot of Ashtanga, but I didn't start out that way and I still take other classes where they do tell you what to do.  Although, now that I think about it, maybe that's part of the issue, that all the non-Ashtanga classes that I take tell me "what" to do but not very often "how" to do something--or at least not as specific as they do in the YogaWorks world.  Either way, I was disappointed in myself.  My pose was a little less than halfway through the sequence and it felt like so much work to stay there and keep practicing with the rest of the group through the practicum.  I could feel the tears brimming behind my eyes and it was so hard to hold it all in.  But I did, somehow I managed to get through the rest of the practicum to support my fellow trainees.  I finally let some of it go during our brief savasana after the practicum, but a lot of the remaining day felt like a struggle to stay present and to keep my emotions in check.

I passed the practicum, but it didn't feel earned.  The purpose of the practicum is to see if you are capable of teaching.  I clearly showed that I wasn't.  Passing this portion of the program does not feel like an accomplishment, it doesn't feel like I deserve it.