Blog
One of the team building principles Baron Baptiste teaches his assistants is the power of acknowledgement and completion. The idea is to acknowledge people on a regular basis and leave them feeling whole.
I have been thinking about this idea a lot this week and even wrote a note to my fellow assistants at Level 2 in Mexico, acknowledging them for everything I learned from them. In the note I mentioned that my mother-in-law Linda had told me that acknowledgement is the greatest gift she had received when she learned she was dying of cancer. Once she knew her time on earth was finite, she began the process of letting everyone in her life what they had meant to her. The nice thing was that everyone did the same for her. Letters and phone calls poured in. At the very end, when it became difficult for her to write, she would dictate letters to me and ask that I mail them on her behalf. This gave her the completion she needed to let go and let the dying process move forward.
A few weeks ago, my friend Kelly’s mother got the same news: untreatable stage 4 cancer. I booked a flight to go out and see them and support Kelly and her Mom during this difficult time. Since then, I have been composing the letter I planned to write to Kelly’s Mom - in my head. I was remembering all of the million things I love about Kelly and wanted to let Kay know. I wanted her to know that she had raised one of the smartest, most giving people I have ever met. I wanted her to know that her role as a mother had given me the gift of the best friend a person could have. I intended to tell her stories about everything I had learned about life and love from her daughter.
Since Kay had been diagnosed in mid-May just like Linda, I thought I knew how things would progress. I would have plenty of time to write my letter and deliver it in person on June 24th. I was wrong. Kay died this past Saturday, just a month after she was given the news. Kelly tells me that she had seen all of her family and that her son had arrived from Sacramento a few hours before she died. It was peaceful. “It was perfect,” is what she said.
For the past few days I have been in and out of tears, not sure where this pain is coming from. I didn’t even cry this much in the days right after Linda died. I am sure there are myriad reasons for the pain, and one of them is that I did not get the chance to acknowledge Kay and get completion with her. I waited to tell her in person and I missed my chance.
I can remember teaching a yoga class while I was caring for Linda and sharing her wisdom with them. I can remember exhorting them to reach out and acknowledge the people in their lives. I am sorry that didn’t listen to my own teaching and am left feeling incomplete. I am also sorry that at this time when Kelly needs me most, I am stuck in my own experience and feel less able to support her. I am learning first hand that acknowledging people and getting completion frees us up to serve others. So don’t just do it for yourself and the person you are acknowledging, do it as a way to serve everyone you touch.
So what is it about Baptiste Power Vinyasa that has inspired me to finally commit to this style of yoga and even open my own power yoga studio?
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I like a strong physical practice. I find that I need to move and sweat in order to get to a quiet meditative state. This practice challenges me physically in the way my Ashtanga practice did. What I found after I began practicing this style, though, was that the sequence is very intelligently crafted and opens the body in a way that is very safe. The lower back pain that used to plague me has essentially gone away since I started practicing BPVY. Bottom line - the practice makes my body feel great.
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As a teacher I like the fact that the sequence of poses is very accessible to new students. While there are challenging poses like crow and headstand in the practice, we are not required to teach every pose in the sequence in every class. As a teacher, I can gauge the students’ abilities and choose poses that will empower them. I now teach the BPVY sequence to my “Silver Power” students, who are all over 55 years old, some of them are even in their 80’s!
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The fact that the BPVY sequence is structured into 11 parts, each with its own set of poses, provides an amazing framework from which to teach. While I can pick and choose what to teach based on what’s happening in the room, I don’t have to develop my own sequence every time I come to teach. When I first started teaching vinyasa classes I spent a lot of time planning my classes and trying to follow my plan instead of showing up and seeing my students and teaching based on what they needed.Instead of planning the poses, I can watch for what’s happening with my students and speak to their experience.
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The same goes for music. I used to spend a lot of time putting together play lists trying to make sure the music would manage the energy in the room appropriately. Now I get to manage the energy using my own energy instead of using someone else’s voice.
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Because this practice has a strong spiritual foundation, but I can be as subtle about it as I like when I am teaching. Some days I am inspired spiritually and this will show up in my teaching. On the days when I am in a very physical space, I don’t feel like I to have to lecture my students on their relationship to God. The spirit of the practice flows from my experience and inquiry rather than from reading scriptures in class.
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Because there is no dogma in the spiritual aspects of the practice. I respect Baron’s way of teaching a great deal because he draws on many faiths in his teachings and does not preach but at the same time does not shy away from speaking of God.
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Because Baron is alive and teaches workshops all over the US and abroad and I can go take classes with him and his master teachers and learn directly from them. When I was constantly seeking my flavor of yoga, I really wanted a practice that had a living teacher with whom I could study. I want to be able to ask questions and tap into my teacher’s experience as I try and find my own way on this journey.
- The most important reason I teach this style of yoga is because it makes me happy and it makes my students happy. At the end of my own practice, I am filled with a powerful joy that comes from my very center. After I finish teaching I get to witness this joy in my students. To see a bunch of sweaty, smiling, empowered yogis leaving class brings me more satisfaction than any other job I have ever had.
I am now in the third year of my relationship with Baptiste Power Vinyasa, and I must say it keeps getting better. I still visit with my other practices on occasion, but nothing makes me feel like I do after I teach or practice Baptiste Power Vinyasa. This one’s a keeper.
While the physical relationship was great, the emotional side of things was challenging. I had this notion that my perfect yoga would be steeped and shrouded in history and therefore legitimate. Learning that Mark had only been practicing for 5 years and was already teaching this style of yoga, not to mention teaching teachers, made me skeptical. What did he know that I didn’t already know? Heh. A lot.
The next three months of teacher training were a journey of self-discovery, and Mark was my unexpected guide. I learned more about myself than anything else, and some of the lessons weren’t pretty. Mark was my mirror, showing me the harsh reality of my teaching. I was robotic, pushy, self-centered, self-absorbed, and hiding behind my technical skills and physical practice. I watched Mark break the other students down into tears and was determined not to let that happen to me. The harder he pushed, the harder I resisted.
It was not until the last weekend of teacher training that something changed. As part of our final evaluation and certification process we were all required to teach one section of the Journey into Power sequence. I was very strong on the technical side, but weak on the inspiration side, so it was perfect when he asked me to teach the hip opening sequence. In hips, we typically hold the poses for 10-20 breaths and after a few technical instructions there is nowhere to hide. You either leave your students in silence or hope to inspire them. As I stood in the front of the room looking at my peers, I was filled with love and for the first time really saw my students and connected to them. The tears started flowing as I began to teach. I don’t recall any of what I said, but it was not technical. It was straight from my heart. I had finally found love in my teaching.
What Mark taught me is that teaching is not about me. It’s about really seeing and connecting to each student and teaching from that connection. It's about Love and Service. To me this is the essence of the Baptiste Power Vinyasa Yoga (BPVY).
Once I completed my training with with Mark and knew this was my path, my husband asked me when I was going to go study at the source...with Baron Baptiste, himself. In my usual fashion I had a long term plan to go study with Baron during the following year. In my husband’s typical fashion, he asked me what I was waiting for. Within a short time, I was signed up for Level 1 with Baron in Tulum, Mexico. Within a year of completing my training with Mark, I had attended 4 one-week long teacher trainings with Baron. Once I knew I had found the practice I had been looking for, there was no stopping me.
So what is it about this practice that has inspired me to finally commit to this style of yoga and even open my own power yoga studio? Stay tuned for the next installment.....
As part of my Baptiste Power Yoga Teacher Certification, I was asked to submit an essay about why I teach Baptiste Power Vinyasa. It's sort of long, so I'm going to post it in installments. Read on for part 1...
I spent many years dating around in the yoga world. I’d try one style of yoga for a while, then be over it and find something new to satisfy my need for physical and spiritual nourishment. Some of these forays into a certain style of yoga didn’t last past the first date (e.g. Shiva Rea’s Trance Dance) while others went on for years (Ashtanga) and became an important part of my day-to-day life. Even in the long term relationships, though, I always had a sense that the practice was not exactly right for me. While I was deep into the second year of my relationship with Ashtanga, I went on a date with Baptiste Power Vinyasa. I had an ecstatic experience, but I was so involved with my Ashtanga practice, that I wasn’t sure what to do. My heart wanted to dump Ashtanga but my head kept telling me that my Ashtanga practice had supported me for so long, that I should not jump ship.
In the months that followed, I started to dabble in the Baptiste practice a little more. I’d travel to Jacksonville for a workshop at MBody Yoga and even took a weekend workshop with Baron Baptiste. At the same time I would do the Primary Series every morning and even signed up for and attended David Swenson’s Ashtanga Yoga Teacher training. The training was great but I left conflicted. Having studied at the Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute in Mysore a couple of years earlier, I had been steeped in the tradition and taught that the only “legitimate” Astanga teachers were authorized by the Jois family. As a life-long rule-follower I was having a hard time deciding to teach Ashtanga without being “legit.” I also firmly believe that a good yoga teacher practices what they teach. So I was in a pickle. I practiced Ashtanga, but felt like I wasn’t good enough to teach it, even though I had been teaching yoga classes for several years at that point.
Within a month of returning from that training, I signed up for Mark White’s Baptiste inspired teacher training at MBody. I had only taken a handful of Baptiste classes at that point, but felt in my heart like it was the right thing to do.
It would be nice to say that during my first weekend of teacher training I fell out of love and jumped in to Baptiste Power Vinyasa with both feet. The truth is that like with many long term relationships, the breakup was slow and painful. I was so attached to my way of doing things that Mark White had to use a lot of force to get me to let go of my old way of being. The truth was that I still loved Ashtanga but knew that I needed to move on. Like any relationship, the practice had run its course and taught me some incredible values and lessons. In the end, though we weren’t meant to be lifelong partners.
The good news was that Baptiste Power Vinyasa and I had an amazing physical relationship right from the start. Every time I practiced I was amazed at how great my body felt - I was buzzing from head to toe and didn’t have any pain at all! In previous practices, I would typically push myself to the point of at least some ache or pain - but it was the “good kind” of pain, I would tell myself. In this practice, even when I worked heard or Mark kept us in frog pose for 15 minutes, I would wake up the next day feeling great.
I can remember deciding that I was not going to let anybody hurt me again, and this song expressed that sentiment perfectly (lyrics here).
I was very successful. I built walls around myself, disconnected from acquaintances and stuck close to a small group of trusted friends. This seemingly worked well. I was able to keep my self safe from feeling pain as long as I kept my circle small and kept a lid on my feelings.
As I moved into the world, this became part of my M.O. I was hardened and impenetrable to casual acquaintances and co-workers. I prided myself on being strong and in control. The side effect was that I was disconnected from almost everyone around me.
It wasn't until recently that I have been able to see how much the walls I built were keeping me from connecting with some really amazing people. Through my yoga studies and my yoga practice I have been able to see that the essence of being human is to connect with others. My practice now is to see each of my peers and students and acquaintances as a potential human connection - to shed the "otherness" I so carefully cultivated and seek the real meaning of Yoga - which is union.
I am not a rock.
