Start Where You Are......

First off I have pinched the title from one of my favourite writers/teachers, Pema Chodron, she has the ability to write simply and effectively without sugar coating anything but making everything in life make sense.

'Start where you are' seems like an obvious statement - where else would you start?  You can't move back or forward in time and start then!  But sometimes we don't want to accept where we are and to use a cliché - we want to run before we can walk.  The same is true of yoga practice and also teaching of yoga, you have to start where you are - you cannot be an experienced yoga practitioner or teacher in an instant, or maybe in a whole lifetime......so just start, that is all you need to do.

Recently I was chatting to my Mum about our yoga teaching and I mentioned to her how I cringe when I think back to my first teaching experiences (just covering a few classes for her to begin with) that I was barely scratching the surface, just teaching a few poses that I was reasonably confident with and really just feeling my way through.  When I compare the classes back then to my classes now (which I also question at times) I feel these days the classes have much more of my own yoga experiences and practice woven through, along with the several years of teaching experience I have so far, but I am always left feeling there is so much more to learn.  My Mum then reminded me of a class she taught right at the beginning of her yoga teaching career, I reckon it must have been about 1985 and I was in the class (aged 11 or 12 at the time) and she played some really upbeat 80s pop and the yoga postures were sequenced rapidly together, I can remember really building up a sweat!  This was the height of the 80s aerobics trend and she said she felt that it needed to be 'jazzed' up in order to sell the idea to people!  Back then yoga was not really a mainstream practice.

Of course pretty soon she settled into teaching her very traditional yoga classes, with waiting lists of people wanting to join, but she too had to start where she was then.  She is still teaching yoga and the classes are no longer accompanied by Bananarama and Duran Duran songs!

So remember when you begin your yoga practice (or anything for that matter) you just have to start where you are, things will inevitably change and you will most probably look back and question decisions you have made, but remember all we have is now, there really is no point in looking back, or too far forward for that matter.  Just start where you are........take that initial step and begin.......