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.