Fasly-Kam

Is it judgement, as a trained practitioner /instructor, when you are a participant in a yoga class and you see someone doing something so wrong for their body that you want to reach out and say "wait - that's going to hurt...please don't." Or is it concern? Or busybodiness, or nosiness, or just plain invasive? What is the boundary? I have to think about it in this context: If I was a nutritionist, would I stop someone who was overweight at a restaurant from dipping their french friend in cheddar cheese soup, drinking a milkshake then going outside for a smoke? But then again, coming to a yoga class to learn is different than coming to a restaurant to eat. If someone offered me bad quality food, I WOULD want another food specialist to speak up and say "that's not properly cooked chicken you might get sick" or even "those greens weren't washed - be careful." Maybe these analogies fail to describe the issue with which I'm struggling. If t...

In a rare occurrence of lucidity, dream-me thought "shit, why am I whinging at the dream-person that is frustrating me? why am i being the opposite of who I want to be?" I woke up sad, but aware of the rarity of that "aha" moment. To that end, in a particularly challenging yoga class today I was actually brought to tears; not big sobbing ones, but hot weepy ones that come on stronger when you hold your breath. I was carrying the frustration of the dream and personal conflict, plus a sympathetic nervous system response (adrenalin surge and anxiety spur) to a particular difficult asana. I needed to STOP making my blissful practice the opposite of what I wanted it to be.I needed to be lucid about what I was experiencing and not victimized by it. So I sat my sweaty ass down, took a deep breath to loosen my throat lock that was just holding in all that negativity. I wanted this practice to be joyful, and I had to choose to make it that way.  I wiped away my tears, breath...