OM Yoga UK - May 2017

om body om body

T

here are many things that annoy

you when you’re a yoga teacher.

Demo-ing your first downward

facing dog of the class, realising

you’ve left all your hairbands at

home, so battle inhaling your own hair for

the next 90 minutes every time you talk.

Watching as half the class copy the

person in the front row who is blatantly there

to show off their bendiness and paying no

attention to your invitation to work on the

basic version of the pose first.

The moment when one ad-hoc, off the

Sometimes it’s the little things that matter the most when bringing yoga into our

daily lives, says Meg Jackson

The little things

cuff response to a student’s question has

more of an impact on the class than the

whole thing you’d spent quite a long time

planning.

And so it was with one of my classes last

week. As I was arriving into the room, setting

out my mat, trying to terminate ‘frustrated

commuter mode’ and activate ‘zen-like

goddess mode’, one of my lovely students

happened to ask – “So how do you do a

handstand, then?”

Of course, honesty is the best policy. So I

had to say “I don’t know”. Even though that’s

not strictly true. I know exactly how to do it.

Unfortunately my body hasn’t quite caught

up with my brain. In my mind I’m floating up

and down like Kino Macgregor on a bungee

chord, but when I try to replicate in practice

what my mind can rehearse perfectly, I’m

less Kino and more sumo.

Anyway, after disappointing my student

with my not so zen-like goddess answer,

I followed it up by saying “but I know how

you start making one.” And so we embarked

on a long discussion about how all these

‘peak poses’ can be broken down into a