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Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Distractions While Teaching


Sometimes when I'm teaching yoga I'll get to thinking about stuff. I'm actually always thinking about stuff. And then I'm talking and leading a class and in between what I'm saying, I'll be thinking things. I've been teaching for long enough that I'm not worried that I'm going to get thrown off by my thoughts. In the early days when my daughter was still young I was afraid I'd fall asleep while I was teaching, especially during the yoga nidra in the final relaxation, because I'd had the experience of reading her a bedtime story and then actually falling asleep and speaking from my dream. I used to be afraid something like that would happen, but it hasn't, so I don't worry.

Today I was having all this insight as we were doing "prana hands" about how there are molecules everywhere and that it might feel like there's nothing there but actually there's air and that's full of molecules. And I was thinking about how outer space is just space and the molecules are very far apart. And how atoms in our bodies are really the same as that - they're mostly made of space. And how the universe is inside of us and the outside is really the inside and it was getting all trippy.

When that happens I just breathe and come back to teaching. And then I teach that our thoughts and feelings are just sensations like any other sensations we experience and they're not really that special.

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