Sequencing Observation w/ Lauren @ Austin Yoga Festival

I was so excited to get the chance to go to the Austin Yoga Festival this year. I even got to meet up with my yoga instructor from Fredericksburg, which was so exciting! It was a very cool experience to get to practice beside the teacher who got me so excited about yoga in the first place!

I ended up getting to observe Lauren from Be Yoga at the main stage at 11:30. I've never taken any of her classes before, but Kara and Lindsay were excited to take her class there so I figured it would be great and it was! Her theme for the class was more or less that creative ideas have their own energy fields, and rather than us feeling like we have to invent the pose, she encouraged her students to search for what already exists inside of them. She compared asana practice to a Michaelangelo quote, where he stated that he as a sculptor wasn't making art, but rather uncovering the sculpture that was already hidden inside of the marble slab. It was a really cool theme, and something I kept thinking about the entire time I was observing her class.

I noticed that she didn't use much, or any, sanskrit while teaching her class and I wasn't sure if this was because it was a public Austin Yoga Festival class, or if that was just the way she normally teaches, but I found it interesting. I also found that she is much more the style of Vinyasa that I am not only accustomed to but more comfortable and most excited about. She makes asana a part of the entire yoga experience, rather than making the class entirely about the poses and work that the body is doing. She has a calming voice and a presence about her that drew me to yoga in the first place.

The thing that I found most interesting about observing her class was that as she kept reverting back to the theme, she kept saying things like "Serving the idea of down dog that already exists" or "Serve the pose like it wants to come into creation. Simply remove what is extraneous." While I like the idea of yoga being an ancient practice that we don't need to invent and can, instead, let it come into it's own creation through our bodies, I think it's really easy to get caught up in what yoga already is, and what other people are doing as far as yoga lingo, etc. and lose sight of what we can each individually bring to the practice. Especially as teachers, I think it is not only our privilege but our duty in a way to bring our own unique and personal interpretation to our practice and to our students in order to keep it growing and changing and alive. What an exciting idea!

Observation 3 - complete!