OK so am I alone or do any of you out there start a sentence and then have no idea how you are going to finish it without sounding like a complete loser or that perhaps English is your second language?!
I do it all the time, which wouldn't be so bad if it happened when I was at home chatting to my family or in the pub gossiping with my friends. Of course it only happens when I am teaching a class. And the illusion is shattered! I am not in fact an eloquent serene goddess who glides through life on a cloud, I am in reality a gibbering idiot who couldn't string a sentence together if her life depended on it.
I hate that my cover is so regularly blown!
As a yoga teacher you pretty much have to talk for an hour straight. Now we are not the only people who have this pressure, many business types have to make long presentations, comedians have to be humorous for extended periods, actors, public speakers, politicians, but the difference is that they have learnt by heart what they have to say. I am just winging it!!
Take The President of the United States, when did you last hear him stumble over a sentence? A health reform, maybe, but a sentence, never!
Now I don't mean, I have no idea what I am talking about because I am a bit of a boffin and genuinely do my homework on anatomy and alignment and philosophy but I don't rehearse my lines. I put a sequence together, I know the relevant info about the postures but I don't stick to a script. Maybe that's why there is often a "...and now send that stretch right out through both sides of your...crown!" or "Take your weight towards the ball of your heel!" and my particularly cringe worthy favourite "...and let savasna take you into the depths of a relaxing breath"?! What the bloody hell is that meant to mean Fee you total tard!
And of course this is more likely to happen if, like last week, the lovely Julie Bealey, yoga teacher extraordinaire and fantastic inspirational guru (I want to be her when I grow up!) unexpectedly floats into my Saturday morning class for the first time. EEEEEEEKKKK!
Or when I am in a private one to one class with a super high flying, high achieving business person, and nowhere to hide!!!
In those slightly pressured situations I simply lose complete control of my verbal abilities!
There are worse things I could lose control of I suppose!
So anyway, I am working on it, you will be pleased to know...well, those of you who have to listen to the ramblings in my classes anyway!
And I am not too worried about it. We are all, after all a work in progress. Some bits of us are finished to perfection and other bits need some work...in my case, lots of work!
I think the key is to relax, right? Listen to me, a fully fledged yoga teacher asking if perhaps relaxation may be the key to me functioning better!
Duh!
I need to practice what I preach - take a breath, and allow things to flow more naturally. As soon as we get into that survival mode, all the lovely added extras our bodies produce leave us.
All those extras like, English!!!!!
I need to tap into my parasympathetic nervous system...I am sure I have one in there somewhere...and allow the calm and controlled side of my mind and body to take hold of the nervous and quivering wreck by the shoulders, lay her down on a comfy sofa, give her a cup of tea, a copy of "Hello" and the night off whilst She takes over.
Perhaps, unlike one of the Bikram robots (too much?!),the fact that I do speak from the heart and I do get my words muddled and sometimes it seems like I have put the wrong teeth in, makes me more real to my clients? Instead of a super bendy, spiritually enlightened, goodie goodie, I am in fact a real human with real life issues and problems like everyone else? Maybe they can see I am an empathetic teacher, who is dealing and struggling with the rest of them!
And until I teach a grammatically correct class, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!
Namaste Freedom junkies!
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