The last thing you need to be is a great athlete!
and just having compassion for the people you are teaching and regarding it as a gift.
Whilst they obviously focus on making sure their students are well versed in the fundamentals of yoga and alignment inside postures, they want everyone to feel that with practice, they can make yoga feel their own and truly express themselves through it.
Valerie: Certainly we want them to be able to align somebody to the best of their abilities, but it doesn’t mean you need to be able to do the splits perfectly. The last thing you need to be is a great athlete!
Michelle: Yoga is for everybody, the whole social media scene for yoga is actually doing quite a disservice to yoga because everybody is always showing off their best yoga posture. When in fact yoga is as simple as stretching, it’s not meant to look perfect every time. It’s a practice in getting to know yourself.
They did however, acknowledge the huge role social media has played in
helping yoga to spread across the country over the past decade.
Michelle: It’s obviously very useful! Yoga has grown exponentially over the last 10 years – I think yoga has become really mainstream and I think it is because a lot of people are searching for profound balance. Not everybody wants to go to the gym, they want to find an outlet that works for them and yoga, depending on the type of yoga that you go into, has a yoga practice that suits every single person on the planet. That’s why I think it is so popular.
Aside from their knowledge and prowess with yoga, it is the joy that they get from teaching that really sets them apart.
Valerie: When you are teaching people meditation, it’s teaching them to be aware and be mindful and that’s true consciousness. We’re not just bones and tissues, we are a consciousness as well. I find that when I am teaching children, that they really enjoy the being quiet part of yoga and meditation. We are bombarded by noise and to take them into that state where you can be still and quiet is what they really thirst for. You’re really just building a relationship with yourself when you are being silent.
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