Locking The Knee

This week was over by Thursday as far as I’m concerned, and I think most of all the other trainees would agree. You see everyone (all 397 of us) delivered the last posture in the series on Thursday. It was amazing, people were getting up and killing the posture delivery one by one until we were totally finished. The last part of the final posture says “Twist, and twist, and twist, the last chance — twist.” It was so exciting to watch each person get up, deliver the dialogue, and watch their excitment as they reached the very last line of the last posture in the series. I have to admit it was a really great feeling to deliver that last line, knowing that I had now memorized and delivered every posture with the exception of the breathing exercise. We’re on our own when it comes to memorizing and practicing that bit of the dialogue. It’s truly a monumental event as we have all worked our asses off memorizing, delivering, getting critiqued, evaluated, graded, and sometimes defeated while delivering the posture. Some of us shone bright as stars, delivering the dialogue with grace and ease and some crashed and burned almost every time we got up to deliver. One thing that is common for all of us is that we all improved, and learned so much about teaching. For most it was the nerves that got to us. But we’re nervous because we care. It’s normal and a good thing that we’re nervous. The trick I found is channeling that nervous energy into something we can use to our advantage and make it part of our delivery making it even stronger. I have learned so much about how to use my words to teach a rockin’ Bikram Yoga class. Next week we’re getting a chance to string a few postures together so we can practice flowing one posture after another. I’m very excited.

Halloween – “BOO-jangasana”
For those of you reading that don’t practice, bhujangasana is the sanscrit name for one of the spine strengthening exercises we do. So therefore BOO-jangasana is a dorky Halloween yoga joke. So, Um, Anyway : ) Monday was Halloween and the staff put together a Halloween party complete with a dance floor and tons of pizza and soda. Most everyone dressed up and we had so much fun relieving some of the stress from training. I chose a prisoner costume as I thought it was quite fitting for the situation I’m currently in. (Stuck in Bikram’s torcher chamber for nine weeks.) What was really exciting is that a group of other trainees had the same exact idea and when I showed up to the party there were a group of convicts that were wearing the same costume as me. Once everyone got some pizza they started warming up the dance floor and it wasn’t long before Bikram showed up and started dancing with us. I knew he liked to dance and I’ve seen a few photos from past teacher trainings, but to actually see it was a lot of fun. Here’s a few photos of the costumes:

Chain Gang

Showgirls

Spanish Dancer, Black Cat, and the Queen of Hearts

The Legacy of Bikram Choudhury – “The High Yoga Troupe from Calcutta”
This week we got to see some old videos of the legacy of Bikram Choudhury. It gave a good understanding of where Bikram came from and how he came to be the Guru that he is today. Bikram is a student of Bishnu Ghosh who was widely considered one of the greatest Physical Culturalists of the 20th Century. Bishnu Ghosh would take his troupe of highly trained Yogis to do shows around the world demonstrating the power derived from Yoga practice by performing incredible and seemingly impossible feats. We saw videos of yogi’s breaking huge chains, getting walked on my elephants, bending rods of steel against their eye, and some generally crazy feats of strength and endurance. We are all getting trained personally by Bikram, and it’s rather cool to know that we’re not getting trained second hand but rather directly from the source. This week we had an extra 150 or so certified teachers in the room for recertification, all getting a refresher course on the yoga they teach daily. Not only will we get certified in this nine weeks course, but every three years we will have to come back to the source and get entergised and refreshed on the correct way to teach Bikram Yoga. Here’s a video of Bikram laying on a bed of nails getting run over by a motorcycle going 50 miles an hour!

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 6th, 2011 at 8:49 pm and is filed under Bikram Yoga Teacher Training. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.