Mother Daughter Yoga at Omega

It's that time again. Time to head down to Omega for Mother Daughter Yoga. This time it feels different though.

Is this the last time we'll do it? Remmy has just graduated from high school and next summer may be busy with a job and other things. Will we be too old of a pair to continue to do it?

As I prepare to be in a workshop that has us look at what our relationships are like and how much we appreciate our daughters and how we can acknowledge ourselves as mothers for what we didn't get acknowledged for, I'm afraid I won't be able to keep it together.

I live alone with my daughter. It's been just the two of us for sometime. The thought of her not being in her room or hanging out on the couch anymore scares me. What will my life be like in a few months when she's not around anymore? We didn't do practice rounds. She didn't go away to overnight camp or go on trips with other people. We've been together for such a long time.

I'm not at all sorry this is happening, in fact, it's what we've been working towards. But now the end is clearly in sight. The finish line is just up ahead. And then my heart will be ripped out of my body and stepped on and I'll be all alone. Okay, okay, it's not going to probably be like that. But I have feelings inside like it will be like that.

Pema Chodron's lineage teaches us to live life with a broken heart. Go around in our lives with that tenderness and vulnerability at times. I definitely have a broken, tender heart. And teaching yoga from that place this weekend, being there for others while I feel my own sad, proud, open heart, will be a challenge. (Don't worry, I've got this.)

Teaching with Two

As a yoga teacher, I am normally working solo. I drive to places on my own, teach on my own, plan on my own, interact on my own, debrief in my head, and it's like that. Sometimes I get to co-teach, and that's my favourite. It changes everything when I have a co-teacher.

This year I've had the privilege of having at least 3 co-teachers!

• My daughter led a Mother-Daughter Yoga weekend with me at Omega (our pictures are right there) this summer (and we will be doing it again next year - August 9-11, 2013) and we lead that in September at Rama Lotus for a 90-minute session as well.
• My friend, Virginia Miller, co-led a 3-half-day Shiatsu/Thai Massage/Partner Yoga "dabbler" during Family Week with me (and we hope to do it again next season).
• And the wonderful Kat Mills, who has co-led all sorts of yoga experiences with me over the past few years at Rama Lotus and other places around Ottawa, continues to lead Living Your Yoga modules with me at her house for weeks at a time.

Leading classes with two people doesn't always work out money-wise, which is why a lot of people wouldn't do it. However, when there's enough money, or money's not the issue, leading with someone you work well with is the BEST. 

Having someone to share the responsibility with is nice, but the process of collaboration is special. New ideas form, conversations are ignited, and there's a richness that isn't found when there's one-on-one teaching. There's also the spontaneity of what can happen when there are two teachers that doesn't always happen when there's one.

Tuesday night begins a new session of Living Your Yoga in the Makata Yoga Living Room (Kat's empty house - it's hilarious - she really has no furniture just so groups can take over the floor space). We love teaching the yamas and niyamas together so much that we're doing it again. Why do we love it so much? Partly because we get to collaborate, but it's also about the content and what happens to a group when we examine our lives. Being with people as they look at their lives is a great privilege and a special "space" gets created that is unusual in our everyday lives. So we put our arms around a space and hold it and put people in the middle and bounce them up and down gently and get to be there for the giggles and ahas that happen along the way.

If you're coming to this module of the Yamas and Niyamas, don't bother bringing your yoga mat - you won't be using it. Bring an open mind and a clear head so you can consider some of what yoga has to offer. It's not new or trendy - we're going to use the ancient texts as our references. Whoohoo!

(This video was not made for this blogpost. We were fooling around for a different project...)

We're Back

The Mother Daughter Yoga workshop at Omega went really well. I think. The feedback I've received has also only been good (if there are other kinds I haven't received it) and we enjoyed it. We'll do it again next year. Or maybe even earlier. The stuff that happened was amazing.

One of the best things for me about the workshop was what happened for me and Remi and how we got to spend time together and be with each other. I'm sure it was like that for other mother-daughter pairs as well. The yoga was interesting, but the real value was in the opportunity to do something physical, that connected us to each other, as well as spiritual, which got us into our real feeling bodies, and the appreciation that we got during an exercise designed to give good acknowledgement. I think it worked.

On the way home she let me hold her hand a bit. Any parent of an older child may relate to how it feels to have your once-affectionate kid get affectionate with others and not with us anymore and to have that return, even in the context of a workshop where it's an exercise to do an assisted relaxation or just a moment in the car - it's totally worth it.

So much has happened. So much new insight. Old insight. Old friends. New people.

And then there was getting home. I made wicked-time on the drive home only to get to my landline's voicemail and see that my doctor's office had called. The message was for me to call them back because they wanted to set up an appointment with me. With me? They never do that. I recently had a baseline mammogram and a pap smear, plus some blood work the other day. The blood work was so recent, it couldn't be about that. It had to be about the cancer that I had. So I had all night to not sleep about that before my teacher training started this morning. Not to mention just some of the last-minute arrangements, let's call them, for the yoga teacher training, which kept me on the phone for much longer than I was expecting.

I'll have you rest at ease with me tonight knowing that it's not cancer or AIDS or anything like that. There's something about my iron they want to talk to me about. It's not urgent. Phew. Remi's gone to my mom's to wait for the new puppies to be born. I think I'm going to sleep much better tonight.

Big Breath

I'm up really early. I'm excited. Today I'm driving to Omega and tomorrow I'm leading a weekend workshop there for participants for the first time (I've been teaching yoga to staff there for a few years). It's Mother Daughter Yoga and I've been a bit nervous about it.

My daughter came up with the guidelines for who should be in the workshop over a year ago. She's 11 now. She wanted to be with like people. We made the age suggestion between 8 and 16 years old. That's a really big range. We'll be doing some partner work and if there's a big size difference, the poses will work differently, and this we know because we've led the workshop many times in town. But just for an afternoon, not a whole weekend.

I imagine there'll be younger girls who will still hold hands with their moms and cuddle up and there will be older girls who will be sitting with folded arms and would rather be somewhere else (I'm thinking of my own kid - my co-leader!) I imagine there will be moms who are hoping they'll get to cuddle with their early-teen and will be disappointed when they won't get to touch their kid outside of the class (that's how I'm feeling!).

By building the workshop the way I have, there are natural ways for the moms and daughters to connect with touch as well has have time on their own. I'm really hoping it goes close or better than planned but I'm nervous that it won't and I'll be struggling to keep the workshop on course rather than just gently nudging the outline, the way a pilot keeps redirecting a plane in flight.

When I get to Omega today I will be among my friends. After working there for years a long time ago and in more recent years coming down for shorter stays, I've got a number of people I'm connected to who are there on staff. So I'd be excited to go down to Rhinebeck even if I weren't leading a workshop. But to go down as Faculty, that's something else. It's a Big Deal in my Little World.

I wrote to one of my friends down there yesterday and mentioned that I was a bit nervous. He said he gets nervous beforehand and that even last week, Elizabeth Lesser was nervous before leading her workshop. So I'm in good company. I know it's normal to feel excited and/or anxious.

Yoga Class Planning

I know there are some styles of yoga that work from a static template and others that get modified based on the teacher, but even the pre-programmed classes have to give a little based on who's actually in the class. As a teacher, you'll have your plan and then you'll be with your group and the plan may need to be adjusted.

"Planning is priceless, plans are useless," is one of the phrases I learned a long time ago.

I received an inquiry from a participant in my upcoming Mother Daughter workshop at Omega about the amount of time we'll be doing seated meditation compared to postures. I replied with something like, "we'll do some seated meditation but I don't expect it will be for too long because half of the group will be kids and I'll work with the group." Offering an hour-long sit isn't in my plan for that workshop even though some of the kids might be able to do it. From my experience, kids won't enjoy sitting for that long in a yoga workshop and neither will the grownups!

On the other side, an old student came to class last night who hadn't been in a long time, so she hadn't been to the class since I switched it from a Beginning Yoga class, which was basically the same every time, to a Yoga and Meditation class, which has a new predictability. She's someone who I knew came to the class in part because the routine was count-on-able. I let her know in advance that the class had changed somewhat and I felt a bit bad that'd I'd changed it because I knew she liked it the way it was. She did great and I think it all worked out well. In that case though, I wasn't really prepared to not do the longer meditation because that structure was established and the class had that as a theme, not to mention there were lot of other people in the class. I was committed to that plan, but was aware that it might not work for everybody.

Being committed to the plan versus being attached to it is one way to look at how it could be. For the Mother Daughter Yoga workshop I'm not even really committed to the plan but rather to the delivery of an experience or opportunities for an experience. The plan might go out the window when I see who shows up. 8 year olds are quite different than 13 year olds and their relationships with their mothers are often in different stages. So different activities may be appropriate for the group.

The trick is to be sensitive to the group and to really know your stuff so you can adjust and for extra bonus points, which will translate into a better group experience, is to make it seem seamless to your students. Taking your plan and making a big production of tearing it up in front of them isn't necessary, although there may be times when that's the thing to do! But having the confidence that comes with being responsible for your group will make your teaching experience satisfying. You'll be ready for anything.

I Know I've Been Quiet

I know I've been a bit quiet lately. And it's not that I don't have anything to say. I'm pretty busy and I'm also busy with stuff that's having me be a bit internal. Looking back in my life, I think November tends to be a time to go inside, sleep more, eat more, go slower, and this one is shaping up like that too.

In the meantime, here's a video clip that I worked on this week that is still in draft form but is at least postable.