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I’m VERY excited to introduce @carlostaomovement I’m VERY excited to introduce @carlostaomovement to you! Carlos and I recorded this conversation - ‘Experiencing wonder from the inside out’ - a couple of months ago. It’s the very first episode of a new series I’m calling, ‘In Conversation…’ The full 75min version is available through The Embodiment Project online platform (you can sign up for a free 7-day trial at the link in my bio). Or, you can click the interview link in my bio to access the first 30mins on YouTube 😊 You won’t regret it! You can check out Carlos’s work (a special blend of anatomy, movement and mysticism) at @carlostaomovement Keep your eye out for the next interview in July 😊
New content drops of The Embodiment Project tomorr New content drops of The Embodiment Project tomorrow! Get all the details here 👆👆👆 Sign up for a free 7-day trial at the link in my bio 😊
A conversation about what it means to practice emb A conversation about what it means to practice embodiment as a yoga teacher… PART TWO I imagine you’ve heard the following expression a thousand times: ‘If you want to know the effect of the practice look at the life of the teacher’. I’m sure you’ve heard the next expression too: ‘The point of yoga is not to get better at yoga. It’s to get better at life’. The techniques of yoga exist for a reason. When the right technique is matched with the right person it improves the quality of their life. That means the purpose of learning new techniques is not to look fancy in class or grow an instagram following. It’s to grow our calibre (and capacity) as humans. It’s to become: More self-aware More empathetic More of our self It’s to have a greater sense of: Integrity Connection (with self, with others, with life) Trust (in our self, in others, in life) That means, as a teacher, ‘embodiment’ is more than embodying physical techniques (check yesterday’s post for that). It means embodying a commitment to self-inquiry (and the actions that grow out of that inquiry). A caveat: I think, in yoga, there’s a tendency for students to expect perfection from teachers (teachers should know all the yoga things, be easy and breezy all of the time and never make mistakes). I happen to think that’s unfair. It holds teachers to a standard that’s impossible to meet. However, I do believe being a teacher means more than just memorising concepts. It means processing those concepts through your life and teaching from that place. Life is the place our yoga should be most visible - in our actions, our work, our relationships, and in the quality of our character. Or perhaps I should say, our yoga is already visible there 😉 (for better and for worse). In a world of instant gratification and endless distraction it feels tough to sit in the uncomfortable space of genuine personal inquiry. I, for sure, do this less than perfectly. I do believe, however, that this should be our highest goal as teachers.
Can we talk about ‘embodiment’? And, before yo Can we talk about ‘embodiment’? And, before you glaze over because you’ve heard the word so many times, give me a moment 😉 When it comes to teaching yoga, embodiment is non-negotiable. There are two parts… PART ONE How many times have you attended a workshop, learned a technique and returned home, excited, to teach it? We’ve all done it, right? Whether the pressure is real or imagined, we feel the need to provide students with a smorgasbord of novel experiences, even if that means giving away something that’s not yet ours. In the tradition I study in there’s value placed on making something yours before you share it. The expectation for common meditation techniques is that they’re practiced 40 times before you teach them. Why? Think about the first few times you drove a car (the gears, the clutch, the road rules). It was a lot! Would you have felt able to teach someone else? Of course not. Think about the same experience 12 months later. The gear changes were smooth, the road rules felt intuitive, you were now singing at the top of your lungs…and you were also comfortable driving others. To borrow a Sanskrit term, the second experience had shakti (power). Basically, the more you do something the more power it has. Returning to yoga, you know when a technique you’ve been practicing has shakti. You know what it feels like to teach something you’ve embodied. You also know what it feels like to teach something you haven’t (yet). You know those teachers described as having the power of transmission? That’s what that power is. It arises when someone is so deeply embedded in the practice they’re teaching they can transmit the experience to others. That’s a powerful form of embodiment, right?! I’ll tell you about the other kind tomorrow 😊
Have you heard of the ‘ladder of fall’? Sound Have you heard of the ‘ladder of fall’? Sounds ominous, huh?! And it is, or rather, you are when you’re in it 😉Let’s break it down: Imagine you’re on a trip with your partner, or bestie, or whoever you travel with. You hop in the car, roll down the windows, pick a playlist and cruise, happy as two clams.  After a day of driving a sign appears - waterfall to the left, hotel to the right - you have to make a decision.  Your travel buddy wants the hotel. You want the waterfall. Your travel buddy, in the driver’s seat, wins. What happens? You’re annoyed. Who doesn’t like a waterfall? Why are they such a buzz kill? You get to the hotel, sulk at dinner. Neither of you have fun. Before you saw the road sign, you didn’t know the waterfall existed. Ten minutes later, you’re stuck in a story about how disagreeable your travel buddy is 😉 This is the ladder of fall.  A big teaching in yoga is the need to tidy up our relationship with desire. The issue is not that we have desire. It’s that we try to control the outcome. The fact that our travel buddy had desires of their own, was immaterial. They thwarted our desire, we felt upset and our judgement of them skewed to the negative. But the person who was most negatively impacted by that attempt to control was us! Not because there’s a problem with desire itself (waterfalls are amazing); because there’s a problem with control as it relates to desire. Imagine a different scenario. Your travel buddy goes, ‘I’m tired. Let’s go to our hotel and have a cup of tea’. You: A) Register that while a trip to a waterfall would have been lovely, tea is a different kind of lovely. B) Understand that the world does not need to arrange itself around your preferences. You can desire things, and not get them, and that can be ok.  There’s a sense freedom in that, right? A different, more spacious, relationship with desire. Relief 😌 If this sort of thing is your jam, today is that last day to sign up for: Heroine: Shadow and Light in the Faces of the Divine Feminine It’s full of self-inquiry gems like this. We start tomorrow. You can sign up at the link in my bio 😊

@KARINA.GUTHRIE.YOGA

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