the whole beautiful: Recent Episodes
Erin Jade
If a yoga teacher quits doing postures and no one is witness, or if everyone is there and they shake their heads in disbelief, or if they ask for real yoga, wistfully, like the old days, and if she has students now but feels as if she has woken from a long held spell cast upon her by unknown forces and is now awake for the first time in many years, well what is she then?
From the beginning, and I started teaching yoga in the winter of 2005, I wrote vignettes captured along the way about students, coworkers, my own personal growth and practice. I was learning as I went, looking for definition, poorly equipped I think in retrospect to help people in many ways and sufficiently equipped in others. I wrote about trainings and fallings-out with employers and business challenges, keeping intermittent diaries about various confounding and often troubling aspects of the work.
It’s often a job with very little support. There are no peer reviews or supervision and likely few fellow teachers to interact with especially if you’re entirely self employed.
Most of the teachers I’ve known have had a primary earning partner and teach a handful of classes at most. Career teachers are few and far between and must now compete with a saturated market both in person and online.
This podcast tells this story in the form of essays, notes, journal entries and stories as true and accurately as I can remember. Names have been changed, identities disguised. All stories filter through individual lenses but I aim to be fair and generous in my telling and never to assume clarity where there is none.
My personal stories surely intersect and overlap with common and universal ones, capturing similar under and over tones as yours, representing archetypal themes. Ultimately we tell our stories to feel part of something. To represent and re-examine the human condition.
Yoga itself is complex and the job of contemporary teaching is also wildly varied, slippery to define, rewarding and exasperating in equal measure. There is a revolution going on right now in the field and I am only one of thousands asking probing questions of its intention, efficacy, promise, history, underpinnings and tackling the subsequent questions about where we go from here? This podcast also provides a window in my process of questioning, wrestling, exploring and discovering.
An 18 minute basic yoga nidra, guided relaxation for your restoration and recalibration
The group fitness and I came of age together and when I started paying attention to it again some twenty years later there was Nia and Zumba, mat Pilates, step-aerobics, Hip Hop and yoga. Rodney Yee appeared on Oprah, leading hundreds of live viewers through a simple Iyengar style class replete with breathing and shivasava and the gravitas of Oprah’s testimonial; her life enriched by what was still something a few people with armpit hair did in their living rooms.
When I first started teaching a small handful of students in 2005, I tried to figure out how to rotate Scott’s inner elbows outwards in downward facing dog because that was what I was I was taught in my teacher training: Legs at hip width, arms at shoulder width and inner elbows facing forward. Scott was a globally tensioned body type whose morphology and shoulder girdle mobility dictated that his elbows would neither straighten or rotate. I was remarkably ill-equipped to lead large groups of people in what was perceived to be safe therapeutic mindful exercise, but at least I knew to say don’t do it if it hurts.
Playlist:
Springfish: by Gillicuddy
Dirt 1: by Joachim Nilsson
Dusk til Dawn: by Henrik Andersson
Dual Controls: by Martin Klem
Get Into It: by Johan Hynyn
Crows: by Dust Follows
Runaway Deer: by Arc De Soleil
Teenage Color: by Niklas Ahlstrom
Tape Eater: by Pietnaska
Variation on a Theme by Rilke
by Denise Levertov
A certain day became a presence to me;
there it was, confronting me--a sky, air, light:
a being. And before it started to descend
from the height of noon, it leaned over
and struck my shoulder as if with
the flat of a sword, granting me
honor and a task, The day's blow
rang out, metallic--or it was I, a bell awakened,
and what I heard was my whole self
saying and singing what it knew: I can.
Playlist:
Springfish: by Gillicuddy
Dirt 1: by Joachim Nilsson
Dusk til Dawn: by Henrik Andersson
Dual Controls: by Martin Klem
Get Into It: by Johan Hynyn
Crows: by Dust Follows
Runaway Deer: by Arc De Soleil
Teenage Color: by Niklas Ahlstrom
Tape Eater: by Pietnaska
-
Song: Alright Lover / Artist: Snow Wave
-
Song: Sad Cyclops / Artist: Podington Bear
Ending quote by Erin Clabough, PhD from her book Second Nature: How Parents Can Use Neuroscience to Help Kids to Develop Creativity, Empathy & Self Control
- we still idolize extreme ranges of motion in the media and therefore frustration for a modern teacher is twofold: on one hand the practice is remote and unapproachable (not flexible enough) and on the other the messaging is an insidious dictate of need...
- The exaltation of curious shapes by force is a legacy we’ve inherited. To be progressive teachers, we must sort through and deliberately choose what to get behind: what is sensationalist, relevant, updated, therapeutic, damaging; and where we are within the timeline.
- Forceful aggressive assists involving pulling, pushing, pinching, being stood and sat upon have a curious appeal for some. Boundaries are crossed, rules are written, messages conveyed. I used to feel like an inadequate teacher because I didn’t do vigorous assists. Now I feel assured that this is not the path to increased motor skills.
- Is it still yoga if you don’t do postures? What is our working definition of yoga?
- The Hadza people, in north-central Tanzania, are among the last hunter- gatherers on Earth. We all used to all move for sustenance like they do; in all different ways, planes, speeds, distances. Our eyes and inner ears and nervous systems were stimulated by the dynamic natural world. Once upon a time, movement was not a choice, it was food. And shelter. And survival.
- It used to be a privilege to NOT move. To afford such a thing as leisure. Now our economy is largely dependent on sedentary bodies working at desks and screens. We’re getting tighter and more closed in. Now it is a privilege to move—A privilege to afford the time and space to move for fun/health/personal development.
- “When you understand a technique, you know a technique. When you understand a concept, you understand thousands of techniques. “ -author unknown
- Theres a limit I think to how generous we are with yoga’s definition. Is running or rock climbing or trail running yoga? Where are its boundaries? Is it an approach or a movement practice? Is it absorption? Being in the zone? People going to a class need to know that when they sign up for yoga they are not going to do animal moves or rolling baddha konasana before winding down for sivasana. I did that.
- If i were my grandpa and you changed the class I’d been enjoying for years, I’d cuss and yell and put up a fit. You can’t just change it on people. If you want to teach a new class at another time slot be my guest.
Music:
-
Basse 2 by Monplaisir- Sous Tensions Original Soundtrack
-
Soporific by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
- Cold Funk by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0
When Margaret Welch shows us that she can no longer fully extend her left knee and Meg O’Shea says she has parasites, Beth mouths, Did she just say parasites? I nod because unfortunately I am familiar with sensitive ideopathic gastrointestinal conditions, herbs, diets, speculations, tests and misery, but also I wonder how this is relevant. Beth just shakes her head. We’re doing as we’re told, taking careful notes on the conditions of our classmates, (thirty-six women and five men) as they catalogue health histories aloud so we’ll know how to modify yoga poses for one another. Because this is advanced teacher training. Jennifer Winter ticks off on her fingers: “Two lumbar herniations, inflammation in the cartilage around my heart, two plates and thirteen screws in my jaw and a right foot sprain.”
Band: Shilpa Ray Song: Shilpa Rays Got A Heart Full Of Dirt
Band: Victor Rathnayake Song: Hopalu Wana Petha
Band: Big Ups Song: Body Parts
Band: Big Ups Song: Goes Black
Dear E:
I’m in the yoga teacher turned movement coach boat that’s still trying to figure out where to dock. It seems as though you’re on the other side of that transition? I would love to pick your brain over a phone call sometime and just chat with you about what you’ve found works and doesn’t work, your biggest challenges, etc.
Dear A:
I wish I were on the other side of that transition. Am I? Thankfully I’m not at the very beginning anymore- I have stronger opinions and more answers but the challenge lies in how to get the message out, how to explain why I’m teaching this and not that, why I’m different and it’s different, but more than that, why it’s superior material. I have far more information now that is contemporary, empirical, revealing, revelatory, progressive.
It seems I’ve been circling and bumping at the dock for so long I’m not sure I’ll even know what landing feels like. Perhaps I’ll stay at sea for the long haul, resting in the rhythm of the waves. Perhaps there isn’t as hard a line as I supposed between then and now; the two of me blending more than bifurcating. One of the nicest things to happen to me this year while sailing around in the dark is bumping into more boats out here in these murky waters. People who have opened a door or a bottle like Alice in the rabbit’s den, who can’t go back now because they have seen to much and outgrown their shells, skins, container.
6 short stories: fear, imagination, wishing, dreading, comparing & transforming+ a letter to my former self going to college to study art + Mandy Patinkin on fear
Song interlude list:
Artist: Kitchen Romance Song: My Bloody Beating Heart
Artist: The Tall Pines Song: Boogie Pt. 1
Artist: Break The Bans Song: How Can I Love Her
Artist: Shilpa Ray Song: Nocturnal Emissions
Artist: The Tall Pines Song: Boogie Pt. 1
Artist: The Tall Pines Song: Boogie Pt. 1
- Artist: Shilpa Ray Song: Nocturnal Emissions
temping:
when you're a temp there are carbon copy triplicate forms you must have signed by your boss for the week, and fax before 3 pm on friday for the check to come in time.
gardening:
She moves 2 wheelbarrow loads of mulch to my 20. There is sweat tickling my cheek and coating my shins, it is everywhere, and I fan out the bottom of my t-shirt to allow a breeze on my stomach.
massage therapy:
It is the same exact thing each time. He walks in to the house without knocking or ringing the bell now since we have a routine and I am expecting him. He says a quick breathy hi, takes his plastic bags into the bathroom and comes back out...
MUSIC:
artist: Lobo Loco
album: Vagabond
Songs in order of appearance:
-
hey go
-
work wonders
-
psychedelic blues
-
just a moment
https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Lobo_Loco/Vagabond/
story 1 ~ Coworkers, trance dance and art not to touch
2 ~ a tiny studio where it's even more obvious and distracting when one student doesn't want to be there
music:
-
Song: Things Album: Back To The Sea Artist: Adam & Alma a young electro duo from Stockholm, Sweden- Ellen Arkbro and Johan Graden. With roots in jazz, strongly influenced by American indie pop and Swedish electro, they create their own musical universe. Electronic sounds, Johan's piano and Ellen's voice make a unique sonority that brings the electronic back to the organic.
-
Song: Pictures of Matchstick Men Artist: Camper Van Beethoven live at the Middle East Downstairs Jan 2018
My friend Dori's amazing art: http://dorinamolnar.com/Artist.asp?ArtistID=24700&Akey=CE893GPT