My first official yoga class was supposed to happen in December, but since we had over two feet of snow fall in New York, a few days after another snowcopolopse amount, basically that class never happened and they closed the gym altogether.
But, I had another chance to do it last Monday (thank you Rachel!), at a beautiful loft gym in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. I had three students, all different levels (having asanas with various levels of modifications really helped with this). I had prepared the class in December, and the entire day once again inFebruary, integrating the movements into a Lam chakra themed, root inducing asana practice. My long term teaching goal is to keep my classes integrated with the eastern yoga philosophies. I felt really good about the class, and while teaching, I realized that I need to keep my voice in a healthy pitch range while teaching because otherwise, my voice would get tired quickly. Thank goodness I took off my retainers because I would have been dealing with dry mouth and hyper awareness about them.
I never realized the funny looks people give you when they are being challenged in their asana poses. I was convinced they all hated the class, but then the feedback afterwards was really good from them. At the end they had on a "yoga face", where they were basically zonked out and feeling good, but really, never really thought about the looks on my face during class until I taught a whole class. It makes sense. People really aren't looking happy and relaxed when balancing in vasisthasana (arm balancing side plank).
My two major lessons, well three lessons that I learned from teaching were, never wear retainers, ignore scary weird looks from students during class. Oh the third, I was glad I felt uber prepared with a lesson plan.
