“What Me Teach?!?” A Guest Post by Lisa

(The following is a letter I received this weekend from Lisa. Immediately I requested permission to post this on the blog. So here it is with very minor edits and insertions. Thanks Lisa for your Go For It spirit!!)

Well, that was… unexpected. Here I am at the fiber arts conference and they “offered” yoga at 6:30 am on Saturday morning. So I showed up this morning at 0630 and Mz B, who was running this conference and is old enough to be my mom, says “I forgot the DVD, so (peering at my name tag) Lisa is going to lead our class for us this morning.”

Smiling brightly, she continued: “I talked with her a bit about her yoga last night and she has been doing this a couple of years so it shoud be just fine.”

My take on it: “I don’t even know this Lady!” and also “What, you’re serious?” and “How did I go from admiting I went to yoga sort of once a week to volunteering to teach?  I am certain I never raised my hand…?”

They all just unrolled (unwrapped) their mats and looked at me like this ought to work.

Honestly, two of these ladies had gone out to WalMart overnight (try 45 minutes round trip, plus the time in the store) to buy yoga mats and half of them had “always wanted to try this but didn’t want to try with all those young things.”

So, Okay…….I’d never make it to the door, and I am remarkably well trained to be polite to people older than me.  Somewhere in the dim (coffee deprived) recesses of my mind, I rememebered the words Sun Salutation and figured I could use that for a frame and make up whatever came to me and we were off to the races.

Nothing like teaching to point out to one all the things one does not know. Like names of things. I might have passed the vocabulary quiz, but it was not a great grade. And I won’t retract my previous comment about your seeming inability to count or lack of understanding of the length of a second, but I have a lot more sympathy for it. (Note: Lisa has told me i the past that I seriously lack any understanding of time measurement. She accuses me of using a second to mean an eternity, or thereabouts.)

I also realized that this is a fair bit harder to do while also trying to talk. And remember which hand is your left hand. And to warn people to not overbend their knees. And remember how to get from one pose to the next, and what the next one might be.

And it is NOTHING like being a student at a class. It is not particularly peaceful or relaxing, more like remembering to make your marks for a stage show. And nothing coalesces into being like my home practice, or a good class session. Of course, some knowledge that one was going to *be* teaching might reduce the number of CPU cycles being used to do so. Do you miss just being a student?

BUT, it was REALLY cool watching these gals.  First of all, I would put down money that the next youngest one had 15 years on me, and the rest had 20 or or more. But they were having great fun. And they got less stiff as the time went on, just in 40 minutes. And now a few of them are planning on taking over one of the chickie baby classes at the gym and going as a group. Score! And they are encouraged to try the stretching exercises their docs give them to help stiff lower backs.  Woot! And Mz B is considering who to rope in, as in NOT me, to really teach next year!

In spite of being so shy, I like the part of my job (as an aeranautical engineer, as in I design airplanes) that has me teaching, both in formal scenarios and the casual ones. But I tie it in my mind to passing on what I know so that we don’t reinvent the wheel every generation. Here, I’ve got no particular knowledge set, b/c 2 years of yoga practice is a lot like 2 years into spinning yarn. You are no longer a complete idiot, but you have a pretty good idea that you are an amateur with a ways to go. But it was still very encouraging to be around all those people being adventurous.

And a crowd of older ladies is hysterical in what they say, which I already knew, but it is a treat. I could say we were going to bend forward and touch our toes and they would say:

I can’t see my toes….

I haven’t seen mine since Georgie was born…Your youngest or the President?…..

I can’t see the floor, I left my glasses in the room…..

There are times when I would swear that chaos just swirls around me and weird things like this happen b/c it is keeping the gods entertained somewhere.  But it is funny, and encouraging, and I learn stuff.

So that’s what’s new and different in sunny So Md.

Hope to see you on Wed,

Lisa