This entry was posted on Feb 6, 2024 by Charlotte Bell.
My authentic yoga “parentage” was within the Iyengar system. Identified for its precision, and for inventing the yoga props we use right this moment, the Iyengar system gives a high-quality basis. In workshops, lecturers—together with BKS Iyengar and his daughter, Geeta, each of whom I studied with in 1989—supplied alignment cues about as quick as you would course of them, and typically sooner. As a hypermobile individual, I typically flopped into flexibility-focused asanas with out a lot thought as to how I used to be working towards them. Yoga cues helped me refine my observe, in order that I wasn’t merely persevering with my unhealthy alignment habits.
However typically, after I’d attend conventional Iyengar workshops, I’d go away with an agitated nervous system. I’m guessing it is because the velocity with which alignment cues had been being disseminated made it troublesome for me to combine all of them. There merely wasn’t time for me to course of them, really feel them in my physique and make changes primarily based on what my very own physique was telling me. After which there was the truth that many lecturers “barked” out yoga cues, quite than sharing them. This technique of instructing typically made me really feel pressured to carry out, and typically put me on edge.
I’ve since branched out to review with numerous different grasp lecturers, most notably Donna Farhi and Judith Hanson Lasater. Each studied within the Iyengar system a long time in the past and have since cast their very own paths. Each nonetheless contemplate wholesome alignment to be vital, however their concepts about alignment, and the way in which they convey them, are fully completely different from their Iyengar coaching.
Simplifying Yoga Cues
Each Donna and Judith construct their lessons round a couple of ideas and permit time for particular person exploration. This manner of presenting info is simpler, at the least for me. It’s a strategy I’ve adopted in my very own instructing. It is because I imagine that our personal expertise in our observe is finally our greatest instructor. Giving college students time—and silence—to probe for themselves offers college students extra company. It offers them the power to determine what’s finest for their very own our bodies and minds at a given time. In spite of everything, I can’t presumably know what’s finest for one more individual.
About Charlotte Bell
Charlotte Bell found yoga in 1982 and started instructing in 1986. Charlotte is the creator of Conscious Yoga, Conscious Life: A Information for On a regular basis Apply and Yoga for Meditators, each printed by Rodmell Press. Her third e book is titled Hip-Wholesome Asana: The Yoga Practitioner’s Information to Defending the Hips and Avoiding SI Joint Ache (Shambhala Publications). She writes a month-to-month column for CATALYST Journal and serves as editor for Yoga U On-line. Charlotte is a founding board member for GreenTREE Yoga, a non-profit that brings yoga to underserved populations. A lifelong musician, Charlotte performs oboe and English horn within the Salt Lake Symphony and people sextet Crimson Rock Rondo, whose DVD received two Emmy awards in 2010.
