In my journey through yoga, I have come across many teachers and truth be told not all of them were the right fit for me. People have different practice styles and their teaching usually comes from their practice. For me to have an effective teacher, I need to feel how grounded she/he is to her/his practice.
The cause of my back injury came about from one of my very first teachers and as much as I'd like to blame him for it, I know deep down this problem would have surfaced even after he has stopped teaching me. This problem is about me and until I am able to tune in to my body and learn to open my upper and middle back more to take out the strain on the lower part of my body, I will keep on getting injured. Respecting our bodies with its current limitations and overcoming our fear are the hardest feats to master for me.
Now that I'm taking Bikram Yoga seriously, I'm faced with new teachers once again. At first, I wanted to get the easy teachers, the ones who don't kill me with the heat by opening windows and doors a lot and the ones who don't call my name out so that I can go through class at a steady pace. BUT now I get to appreciate the ones who know when to push me because they know that I can do more.
I practice at BYA and the teacher that I'm drawn most to now is Ginger. I look forward to her classes but dread it at the same time. We have crossed paths before when I first tried bikram that's why she knows that I have had a strong yoga practice so she has a tendency to push me some more. Just yesterday, I was feeling a bit disoriented and when we had to do our first backbend I have to admit that I was a bit scared because I didn't want to aggravate my back. I just didn't realize how scared I was until Ginger shouted in class "Anna Ledesma, really? really?" I was quickly jolted back to reality and instantly had to face my fear. It wasn't easy but I did what I could to tighten my core by sucking my tummy & squeezing my butt while backbending and breathing at the same time. After doing the pose, I tried to feel how my back was doing and it wasn't any worse from before. I think that my middle back may actually be opening up even more that's why I'm also feeling some discomfort in my back.
I'm grateful to have her teach me because she always keeps me on my toes during class. Sometimes when I haven't had much rest and I see that she's the teacher, I would get nervous and curse my luck but I always end up having the best practices with her. I think that teachers really shouldn't be there to go easy on us but rather they are there to push and motivate us to keep on trying to do more. If we always get away with putting in mediocre efforts, chances are we'll never push ourselves to do better.
No comments:
Post a Comment