Yay4Yoga: Yoga in Leutkirch, Germany

20.00 - Tuesday night Yoga with Christine

The Alps, where Switzerland, Austria and Germany meet
are in the far distance. Amazing!

I came to this beautiful, quaint little town in the south of Germany to visit my cousin Doug, his girlfriend Eva and her family. She is from Germany so they are over for 6 weeks. Anyhoo, this place was a beautiful typical country German town, or at least the kind I envisaged in my head with little red

roofs, cobble-stone streets and lots of friendly people. Eva's Mum knows the yoga teacher so she actually organised for me to attend the Tuesday night class. Little did I know that the townsfolk, ahem, I mean the yoga students actually thought that I was some sort of well-known yoga teacher from Australia travelling the world with all the money I don't have!

Front yard yoga lesson, with baby in Savasana!

As Eva and I climbed the stairs of this beautiful little building in the centre to town, we were greeted by the familiar smell of incense. Considering my last yoga class, or at least, an attempt at one was like, 5 days ago, it really felt like I was starting all over again, considering the regularity with which I'd been doing it. Oh, I forgot to say, I also gave Eva, her Mum and the boys a yoga lesson in their front yard. I need to keep my skills up for when I get home! Anyway, people who were passing on their afternoon strolls all slowed down to look in and see us doing yoga. By this time, again in my head, I'm sure it had spread all over town that there was an Australian yoga person their midst. Hilarious. Again, I'm sure if I call myself a celebrity yoga teacher, people will believe it right?

What a gorgeous entrance!

Teacher:

So, the teacher, Christine, greeted us with a lovely smile. Like every yoga teacher, she looked younger than she actually was. After the class she told me she'd been doing yoga since she was 16, for the past 30 years and had only been teaching for 2 years. She welcomed us into the studio and ushered us to the two front mats. Oh dear. I later discovered that she normally has her husband and son in the class on those two mats, but had told them not to come to tonight's class because I was coming. Yikes! Anyway, the class was just lovely. She is a Sivananda trained teacher, which may have explained her awesome yellow pants! Oh and also the Sun Salutations were slightly different, you know the ones where you link your thumbs and reach right back after the first exhale? Anyway, she did it mostly in German and then one flow in English. She even had palm cards that she would refer to for the English words and then look at me for a sort of confirmation to which I would smile or just give the thumbs up. She was then suitably chuffed. I can't imagine how long she spent preparing for this lesson. I actually felt bad! Eva was giving me translations along the way, but eventually I picked up key words like left (links), right (recht), inhale (inalieren), exhale (ausatmen) and my personal favourite down dog (nach unten hund). Hund! That's the word for dog! Awesome.

Studio:

Yay for yellow walls!

The studio was lovely and overlooked the roofs of the town. It had a yellow wall, just like the one at Core Yoga in Brisbane! It was cool and the bolsters were these awesome little round, pillow things. Have never seen those ones before. The music was excellent. It was mostly Kirtan with some piano instrumental stuff. It was almost like she had choreographed it to match whatever we were doing at the time. Again, definitely having music when I start to teach; Kirtan, jazz, whatever! Ooh ooh, she began the class by giving us this oil and telling us to rub it on our feet. Apparently it's more of a Bikram tradition, which I am unaware of, but it perhaps is also used in the colder months to warm your feet. Either way, it was nice, plus my heels were cracked so double whammy. The only problem was once we got into Down dog and various other poses that required a bit of traction with our feet, we were slipping all over the place. Funny though.

Language:

I also had a massive light bulb moment during this class. I remember at Yoga Camp, discussing the necessity of knowing all of the Sanskrit names for poses. Some say it's to keep the language alive and honour the yogic roots and traditions, others say it's to sound like a yoga teacher and impress the students by using tricky Indian words. I say, it's because of what I'm doing right now! I didn't understand most of what Christine was saying and would be constantly looking around or listening for cues from Eva, but each time she named the pose in Sanskrit, I knew exactly what she was talking about. Brilliant! It instantly became the international language. Just awesome. Christine too seemed happy and relieved that I understood her instructions once she said the Sanskrit version.

Sequence:

The class was quite different to others I've done. She began with Corpse pose (Savasana) and then move on to a series of 3 or 4 poses and then back into Savasana accompanied with 3 oms from her. I think we did about 5 or 6 during the class. I've never experienced that before. It was almost kind of like a sort of cross-training yoga. Like you did a few things, then rested so the heart rate would go down, you could reconnect through the sound of om and the muscles would have time to consolidate things Then up you got and back into it. I liked it.

My favourite part was actually the floor sequence which was:

Cat/Cow (Bidalasana), up high to begin with and then getting lower
Locust (Salabhasana), with a few different hand variations behind the back
Bow pose (Dhanurasana) I still think this is called Boat pose! Anyway, we did it a couple of times and in between, we would rest lying flat with our heads to the side. She then came around with a bolster and pressed it onto our lower backs. It felt so good!

Awesome storm.

Right at the end of class, we heard the sound of the church bells ringing as well as the thunder from an awesome storm that had just rolled in overhead. It was just perfect. She then offered us tea and we all sat around and chatted. At least, I smiled and nodded and pretended I knew what they were saying. I'm getting pretty good at it actually, that and putting up with people looking at me like I'm an alien! Eva did some translating and I managed to have a bit of a chat to Christine. Lovely lady, really knows her stuff. Doesn't need to advertise on the INternet because she's the only teacher in town. Really inspired me to move to a country town somewhere in Australia and set up shop there. The class also had that real community feel. Like all of these people had different back stories and yoga was the one thing that brought them together and encourage them to connect first with themselves and their roots, then with each other through having a cuppa! Just lovely. Christine also mentioned that she was starting up an all-male class taught by a man to encourage the guys to get involved. Quite innovative for a small, country town I thought. Highly relevant especially seeing, again, it was all women in today's class!

Overall, an awesome experience that I really appreciated. She really put in the effort to make me feel welcome, especially with the language barrier and further proves that yoga has no borders. It is really uniting!