Shiva Rea’s Embodying the Flow Teacher Training, Day One
I am in the middle of taking Shiva Rea’s four-day foundational teacher training intensive, “Embodying the Flow.” Yesterday was day one.
Well, I survived. First off, nothing could totally prepare you for this other than four hours of yoga a day - and who has time for that except full-time yoga teachers? My arms hurt this morning, but my legs are surprisingly fine.
The morning session was good. We learned some sun salutations and how to do a few small adjustments. We got to practice with the teaching assistants in smaller groups and that was terrific. Shiva is a bit too obsessed with her power version of chatturanga and I had to pace myself to not burn my arms out.
The afternoon was a bear. Shiva ran us through a yoga flow that culminated in an arm balancing pose involving a SPLIT!
OK…while quite a lot of people in the class were already yoga teachers and young spry women…I was not the only one who could not do this pose. A woman next to me was a certified yoga teacher through Yoga Works. She has been teaching classes at Yoga Works and had never ever done that pose, ever. She enjoyed the challenge, but I have to admit I was pretty annoyed.
The class had been represented as a foundational teacher training (the first level of a series). I see no reason why we needed to jump to such advanced poses on day one. There were no adjustments given, either.
That said, Shiva is brilliant and definitely pays attention to what goes on in her classes. But with mixed levels here - 1/3 long-term yoga teachers, 1/3 yoga teachers with 2 years or less experience, and 1/3 people with no yoga teacher training…I felt like I was being thrown into a class that was too advanced. The problem is, those super advanced people kept demanding the harder stuff and the rest of us just had to keep up.
But you are in teacher training, you say! Well, I know of teacher trainings where it is even OK to go if you are a beginner. I have no plans to teach advanced yoga classes right now, and there’s no reason why I am not capable of teaching basic sun salutations (as was the class description). Personally, I would have been happy to stick to the basics in this weekend, as I expected in a foundational four-day training.
Today is going to be a long day. We’ll see how it goes.