At the beginning of the pandemic, a local yoga teacher had no desire to teach her classes on Zoom. But, as things stretched out, she really missed this important part of her life. She faced the reality of virtual classes or no classes – finding both good and bad aspects, and learning to accept it all.
When I was first asked to write a Blog for YCTY it was long before our world had changed, before our world had become virtual, isolating and uncertain. Back then, I was planning to write about how I found yoga, what inspired me to become a yoga instructor and my personal growth that followed. I am happy to save that story for another day.
Teaching yoga through Zoom has allowed me the opportunity to share the love of the practice during the pandemic and to help yogis slow down and find their breath. Providing a class of moving through asanas, mindfulness, and savasana. I never imagined I would be sharing my practice online but here I am. And believe it or not – it is still wonderful. But let’s not kid ourselves, there is nothing better than a hands-on adjustment or assist during a practice. For this reason, I make it a priority to help those in class really feel the pose through cues or closing our eyes and noticing the feeling of the physical body during the practice.
My intention as I began the Gentle Yoga for Resilience series for You Call This Yoga was to bring mental and physical skills to participants in order to develop resilience during this pandemic. Over the past several weeks, I have been observing my own development of resilience. It has been a part of my practice of “svadyaya” or self-study. Never before in my yoga teaching career has there been such a large cultural experience impacting my students as well as myself. As I am teaching about resilience, I am also working to strengthen my own resiliency.
The current situation in the world has led most of us who love yoga to seek out classes online. A quick google search just showed there are lots of choices now and over 75,000 people may be in one class alone–not mine, but some yoga teachers are getting a lot of participants. It doesn’t matter now how many people are in an online class as you won’t be bumping elbows with anyone, worried about props, or any of the other things that might come up if you were to enter a crowded yoga class in a public space.
