Day 199: My “other” life

Tags

daily practice, yoga and office work, yoga for computer backs, yoga practice

I have a day job. Yes it is true. I do not make a living teaching yoga. Actually at the moment teaching yoga has cost me $272.25. I track my expenses pretty closely. I have no illusions that I will be making big bucks teaching yoga. I was warned well in advance that this is rarely the case despite people shelling out the big bucks to learn yoga. I teach for the love of sharing this practice. I have made a promise to myself however that teaching yoga can’t “cost” me money. I need to at least break even. As you can see from the figure above I haven’t quite sorted that out yet. In time.. I am still pretty new to all of this.

So my day job is design, marketing and computer techie type stuff. Yesterday I was working away when my mind started to wander. I struggle with this a lot in my job. Sitting in front of a computer for hours is a bit mind numbing at times. It was sunny out. I wanted to play. I decided to take a half hour break to do some yoga. I went outside and did yoga on the stone patio in the back yard. It was warm and wonderful. I felt incredibly refreshed afterwards. Work became interesting again. I REALLY need to remember to take these kinds of breaks. It makes such a difference with productivity and general happiness in my job. I accomplish so much more when I remember take some time away from the screen.

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Day 166: Why hello, yes I am a yoga teacher… would you like my business card?

Tags

marketing yoga, yoga business, yoga teacher

I had a nice class last night at the smaller studio I teach at. It was cozy and I felt a lot less nervous than I usually do going in to teach a class. I am really grateful my “teaching nervousness” is subsiding. I didn’t get into teaching yoga to feel more stressed. It was my hope that teaching yoga would allow me to share something I love while reducing the amount of stress in my life.

At the end of the class I handed out some “free class” passes to the students so they could share them with friends that might be curious about yoga. It felt a bit odd and business-like. Networking, marketing, print collateral… this is all stuff I do in my other job. My “day job”. I have years of experience working in design and marketing. I know how important it is to get yourself out there.  I also know there are about a thousand yoga teachers in the town I live in so there is lots of competition. But somehow it all feels a little strange. Business, marketing, competition and yoga in the same sentence?? It is kind weird. I have to be aware of keeping things balanced in this area. I believe in what I am doing and that it can help people. I enjoy teaching. Promoting in this way feels easy because I have confidence in the product/services offered… but then I put my “marketing hat” on and it all feels a little odd. In some ways I wish I could hire someone else to do this part of the promotion. However being a new yoga teacher certainly doesn’t give me the financial means to be hiring marketers. Besides I do actually know how to do this so it seems silly to source it out to someone else at this point. Maybe later.

Day 95: Learning to teach yoga to those injured by being injured

Tags

baker's cyst, yoga, yoga for injured knees

I seem to have injured my knee. I guess I injured it a while ago. I have some vague memory of limping about a year ago when I had just gotten back into exercise after having the baby. The limp went away and I thought nothing of it… except for noticing sometimes in the bath that the back of one knee seemed a bit bigger than the other.  It wasn’t painful and didn’t bother me. It came and went. I guess, unbeknownst to me, I had developed a baker’s cyst. Yoga, if done correctly, shouldn’t aggravate this condition. However if you don’t know know you have a knee injury some postures can cause this condition to worsen. I didn’t know I was injured. I did some DEEP back of the knee stretches and the swelling got worse. Yoga encourages movement of synovial fluid in our joints (including knees). This is a good thing except when you are suffering from inflammation or swelling in the joints. This extra fluid seems to have pooled in the back of my knee limiting movement. GREAT.  Just what I need while I am doing my yoga teacher training.

I am trying to look on the bright side. I want to teach gentle yoga. I want to be able to teach people who are recovering from injuries. I want to help people who have mobility issues through yoga. So having this condition helps me learn right? Learn how to move in and out of asanas safely with an injury? The yoga does seem to help my comfort levels. It helps with the pain. It FORCES me to take it easy in asanas, to step backward and go slow. The whole thing is kind of ironic. Thankfully we are getting into the “how to work with injured bodies” part of my teacher training.

Day 25: Office work=sore back, stiff neck

Tags

office work, postnatal yoga, sore back, stiff neck, yoga, yoga recovery

Today was the second day of over 8 hours in a row of computer time. I really notice the difference in my body on my office days now that I am practicing yoga daily. It is astounding how much stiffness comes from sitting all day. I love my work and have no plans to stop doing what I do but this yoga experiment of mine is certainly showing me that computer time should be broken up into smaller chunks with breaks in between.

I did the routine below tonight. I like this woman’s sequences. There are lots of gentle abdominal strengthening poses in her combinations. It ‘s great recovery work for a frapped post baby tummy.