Hip Hop Yoga

@Yoga213

9.00am - Chill
10.30am - Hip Hop

Can't. Move. Arms. Too. Much. Yoga.

Well, after doing back-to-back classes, I guess I deserve to not be able to move my arms. But, it's good pain, not bad pain! So since I've become a yoga teacher, I've always had a couple of hip hop, r'n'b, reggae, funk and even jazz on my playlists. Having started hip hop dance with the amazing Jasmine Meakin (um, over 200 million views on YouTube anyone?!) in the mid 90s in Brisbane, I guess I have always had a love for hip hop and everything ghetto. When I discovered Hip Hop Yoga about a year ago, the fusion of two of my favourite things, I knew that eventually I wanted to teach this style. 

The studio. Yay for fake grass and potted palms!

Now that there are two official Hip Hop Yoga studios in Australia, I decided to visit the one in Sydney (the other is in Melbourne) and see what it was like for real!  I bundled a couple of my students, Olivia and Mary, into my X-Trail at the horrid time of 6.30am on a Saturday morning. Isn't it funny how your body always seems to know it's a weekend and makes it that much more difficult for you to get out of bed? We arrived in Bondi, the land of beautiful, skinny people (think mini-LA), with enough time to have a coffee and talk about yoga. Seeing as I'm still relatively new in the country town of Mittagong, in the beautiful Southern Highlands of New South Wales, about an hour out of Sydney, it's nice to automatically have friends in the form of yoga students. It is still so funny that my non-yoga friends thought that I woke up one morning and decided to be a yoga teacher, which, in their defence, is a legitimate opinion seeing as most of my 63 job that I've had have come about in that exact fashion! But, the majority didn't know that I'd already been practising for 15 years, mostly in my lounge room to the same Geri Yoga DVD!  I believe it's such a personal, sacred practise that you can just do by yourself, for yourself, with no judgement or competition. 

Anyway, off we trotted to the studio to do our back-to-back classes! The studio itself had a lovely beachy feel with semi-vintage pieces of furniture, bunting (I LOVE BUNTING!) and a common theme of pineapples! Our instructor, Tarsha, is also the studio manager and is totally laid back and cool. Man, I wish I was cool.  I've just never been one of those cool people who carry myself with ease and wear trendy, hipster things. I've just always been a bit awkward, frequently tripping over my own size 10 feet, and usually offending at least one person a day with my no social filter.  Anyway, yeah, she was cool.  My friends and I introduced ourselves and she was so excited that we'd driven all the way from the "country",  just to come to her classes!  It was pretty cool…just like her…not me. We put our stuff on a shelf and then went into the studio and chose our mats, at the back of course! The outlook was a balcony overlooking the building next door and a bit of sky, with fake grass, I LOVE fake grass!  I always think that if you have fake grass, it should be compulsory to accessorise with a plastic flamingo and some sort of palm tree. Needless to say, there were real palms. Happy days. 

Chill:

Thank you Side Crow lady. This is not me. 

Both classes were amazing! I don't think I've ever done so many arm balances in one class before. The chill class was a slower Vinyasa class, but my friends and I agreed that it was actually harder than the Hip Hop one afterwards! One of the highlights for me was ss we were in Chair or Firece Pose (Utkatasana), we then twisted to the side and were given the option to do Side Crow (Parsva Bakasana). I gave it a red hot go and for the first time, I actually got both of my legs extended with a one arm balance!  I was so excited that I toppled forward and fell onto my head. Onwards and upwards. Unfortunately, I am still balancing on both arms, so I was so stoked to randomly balance on one.  We then did normal Crow (Bakasana) and did the jump back into plank, which I can totally do now too yay! Tarsha demonstrated it perfectly of course and then continued her teaching, just cruising around the class seemingly floating on a cloud of coolness.

Olivia and Mary with fancy tea. 

Tea break:
After the Chill class was over, Olivia, Mary and I all hung out in the foyer area and Tarsh gave us a delicious Macqi, Acai and Cacao Luvju Raw Organic Superfood Energy Bar from LovingEarth. Now, I don't know what any of those ingredients are, but seeing as I can't pronounce them properly, I'm sure they are all really good for me.  We definitely felt healthier afterwards!  We washed them down with a T2 Tea as Tarsh introduced us to the incoming students for the 10.30 class.  Everyone was so friendly and also looked as us like we were aliens, driving all the way from the "country" to do yoga in the big smoke! Off we trotted, newly energised after our hard-to-pronounce food and embarked on our second class.

Hip Hop: 
The main difference between the Chill and Hip Hop was that the music was much LOUDER and we flowed through the Vinyasa between almost every pose. It was just exhausting. I think we were probably already fatigued from the Chill class so it did make it a little harder. It included more advanced poses including Bird of Paradise Pose (Svarga Dvidasana) and Reverse Bird of Paradise (Parivrtta Svarga Dvidasana) which I didn't actually know was a thing until today! Then finishing off with Headstands (Sirsasana). Tarsh demonstrated a really effective step-by-step method to get into Headstand, giving Dolphin (Makarasana) as the low option, and immediately making me decide that I need to do my Level 2 Teacher Training ASAP. I am not qualified at all to teach inversions like Headstands and a few students have asked me to do them, but I just have to say no.  It makes me sad that I can't offer my students the full gamut of yoga because I'm still such a newbie!  The relaxation (Savasana) at the end was lovely and accompanied by more relaxed hip hop music. Oh, I totes forgot, the music itself had a mix of old school and modern day stuff, from Kriss Kross, Will Smith and Beyonce to well, more modern day stuff that I don't know the names of. I really liked that she kept the music going for Savasana rather than complete silence. I think I will definitely roll like this when I start teaching my Power Yoga with funk/hip hop fusion (I can't call it Hip Hop Yoga unfortunately because it's now officially trademarked) back in the country.

Teaching:

My students in Savasana…soooooo relaxing :-s

Tarsha had a really relaxed vibe in her teaching style. Her voice was nice and just loud enough to hear over the crazy beats! She rarely did the sequences and taught almost completely verbally. One day I hope to get there. I am still teaching on my mat and occasionally leaving to do adjustments, but with each class I get more and more confident in my verbal cues. It is a little trickier teaching in gyms because I almost always get beginners who invariably rely on the visual.  On a side note, I've put in a picture of one of the gyms I teach at. I explained to Tarsh that it actually has no walls and we often listen to the grunting of guys doing weights or the sound of people running on the treadmill. If it wasn't so funny, it would be tragic.  Gyms are never conducive to teaching yoga, let alone in a "studio" with no walls, but you gotta start somewhere right?  One day I will teach at a proper yoga studio! Finally, Tarsh did a fabulous adjustment/stretch when I was in Lord of the Fish Pose (Ardha Matyendrasana) enabling me to almost look to the wall next to me from the other side! Crazy town!  Oh and in Savasana, she extended my legs and did the push down thing on my shoulder and pelvis which I've only ever done on students sporadically myself, but have never really experienced the benefits. DEF adding this to my repertoire.

View from Tamarama Beach.

Overall, it was everything I dreamed of and more. On the way home, we headed to the Tamarama Beach to do a bit of a coastal walk and it was just the perfect end to the morning. 

Click here for an article from the Sydney Morning Herald about Yoga213. 

Coffee: We went to a trendy place called About Life which had great coffee, a sunny aspect and lots of trendy people with even trendier dogs. The food selection was amazing and had everything from pale to macro to vego. Definitely recommend.

Me, Tarsh, Mary and Olivia. 

Free Yoga in the Park!

@Cherry Tree Walk, Bowral

7.30am - every second Saturday morning during Summer

As a beginning yoga teacher, I felt like somewhat of a fraud expecting people to actually pay me to teach them yoga.  So, I felt the safest option, being new to town and all too (with at least 4 yoga studios in the area that I knew of), was to offer some sort of free yoga in the park during Summer.  I actually got this idea from my big trip!  In New York and all through Europe, I would always see either Tai Chi or Yoga scattered through parks. More specifically, the experience I had doing yoga in the park in Vienna really stuck with me and I was determined to recreate it. (Click here for Yoga in a Park in Vienna Blog) I thought it would be great to do something like this in a little Australian country town that's never had anything like that before.  This would, in turn, give me a bit of practise as a first time teacher, without the pressure of people expecting to get value for money AND introduce people to yoga who otherwise would never have the guts to walk into a yoga studio. Hey, I did yoga from a  DVD for about 3 years before I even set foot inside a yoga studio!  As a bonus, I felt it was a bit of karma yoga too. It still remains my favourite class to teach.  Being outside, under the trees, in the sunshine with ducks walking through the class and working with complete beginners, was total heaven. One of the regular students, the gorgeous Margot, who travelled half an hour just to come to yoga, would always bring me some sort of gift, be it flowers from her garden or homemade marmalade. It was just lovely. 

The logistics weren't so bad either.  Here I will outline what I did in case you'd like to do it yourself:

1)  Contact your local Council to get permissions. I had to fill out a few forms to allow me to use  that section of the park every Saturday morning over the Summer months. I also had to do a Risk Assessment of the area to ensure the yoga students were safe. Finally, I had to upgrade my Insurance to include a $20 million Public Liability Plan.

2)  Make flyers.  My friend Sammie and I then did a letterbox drop in the area surrounding the park to deliver all of my "Free Yoga" flyers. I also dropped them at most of the local cafes and shops. They looked like this:

3) Get yourself in the local paper. I contacted the Southern Highlands News to see if they would give me a free advertisement in the "Classifieds" section seeing as I was offering a free service to the community.  Little did I know that they would end up running not one, but TWO feature articles on the concept. Score! Also, hilarious.

Yay for free advertising!

I was just stoked that they put me in the "Entertainment" section!

4) "Borrow" your niece's blackboard and catch the foot traffic once classes have started.  The area where i taught yoga was right near a walking/bike path, so I placed the blackboard, with spare flyers, strategically next to it and managed to garner lots of business as a result.

My friend Nell came to every class at the beginning
until other people started turning up. What a good friend!
Also she taught me this, "one is better than none".

5) Persist! Some mornings, it would get to 7.30 and I had to make the decision to start packing up or hang around. Then I had that dilemma, which I think most yoga teachers have but often don't talk about. That whole, "Gosh, if nobody turns up, then I get to go and get myself a coffee or have breakky. I secretly wish nobody turns up now…" But, I always had at least one person arrive, so that was nice. By the end of summer, I had a maximum of 12 people, including one lady and her 3 children. It was so cool!  Also, after one free yoga sesh, I received an email from a couple of joggers who had picked up flyers on their way past after seeing us doing yoga that morning. I then ended up doing a private session for them and a couple of their friends once a week over the course of a few months.

All in all, a successful and rewarding venture and one in which I will have a repeat performance next summer. Yay for free yoga in the park!

NOTE: Jessica, my niece, now has her blackboard back. My sister told her it was "getting fixed"…for 6 months.

I have to go and pretend to be a yoga teacher now Mum.

OMG!

It's been 6 WHOLE MONTHS since I've updated this blog. Well, I've actually been writing bits and pieces and have like 5 half finished drafts sitting behind here waiting to be published. I am now, yes, right now on a Thursday morning in mid-May, sitting in a coffee shop in Mittagong, NSW, Australia drinking a Chai Latte and rereading some of the drafts as I try not to fall asleep from boredom. They were quite boring and I attribute the "boringness" of them to lots of turmoil in my life and not really wanting to put any flair into my writing.  So, it's official, I have my writing mojo back and will give you a Cliff's Notes version of what's been happening on and off the mat. So, here is a quick recap of what's happened.

AN INURY: 

I had a bulging disc between L3 and L4.

One week before I was due to teach my very own PAID yoga class at a newly opened local gym, I managed to injure myself. Badly. I slipped a disc in my back. Well technically had a "bulging disc" between my L3 and L4 vertebrae for the second time in my life! (The first was the result of a Mountain Biking Injury when I was a lifty for the Summer Season in Whistler, Canada…job #32) Apparently slipped discs never really go away so for my first few months of teaching, I taught with a slipped disc.  In between I was getting acupuncture, going to the osteo, chiro, physio and anything else that ended in "o". I was taking Chinese herbs alongside Valium at night just so I could sleep! Hey man, I'm all for alternative therapies, but sometimes a chick just needs some hardcore painkillers.

As such, I spent my first few months in a bit of a haze, frustrated at not being able to demonstrate the poses properly. I had some very creative ways of explaining sequences, sometimes getting a student to demo it for me, and relied heavily on verbal cues to instruct. Challenging to say the least! Teaching with an injury is shit. There's no two ways about it.

David and Goliath cartoon. Legen-dary. 

A BOY: 
I met a boy. Well, reconnected with a guy I met 15 years ago who "happened" to be travelling down this way for a conference and we sort of got together/I had 5 wines and suddenly found him attractive. Also, because, well, I'm not getting any younger, clock is ticking and all that and well, you get it right?  So, after 4 months of "dating" over the phone and doing the long distance thing, he decided to quit his job and move 2,500km to live with me.  SO, that lasted 2 months and I am now just finishing the hideous crying randomly all the time, breaking the 12 month lease (I've never committed to anything for 12 months in my LIFE, what was I thinking?!), packing, crying, putting ALL of my furniture back into storage, a bit more crying and moving back with my parents' for the 14th time!  On the upside, the removalist asked me for my number so I guess that's a plus. He could smell a rebound chick from a mile away! (SIDENOTE: I didn't give him my number. I've sworn off men indefinitely.)

That's me on the left doing stupid, pouty face.

A MUSICAL:
The first thing I did when I arrived at this new country town, Bowral, with a population of like 12,000 after moving from Brisbane, a medium-sized Australian capital city with a population of about 2 million, was NOT look for a job, but was to audition for a musical!  Cue my parents' shaking their heads at my logic and wondering if I was ever EVER going to grow up! #peterpansyndrome So yes, I auditioned for Chicago - The Musical, which is like my third favourite musical and got in as "Pop", a Cell Block Tango girl. SO, I got to meet other crazy theatre types and thus make instant friends. Work could come later. Rehearsals took up much more time than I anticipated and as such, I had zero creative drive left to write my blog :-(  Meanwhile, that's all over after 3 weekends of runs and I slipped into a bit of post-show depression, which is standard after coming down from all the adrenalin and stuff. Yoga has helped me through it though :-)

Next stop…horse yoga! Watch this space.

A HORSE:
It was my birthday a few months ago (turned 25... again) and well, basically, my friend bought me a horse. Yep, I'll say it again…my beautiful friend Michelle, BOUGHT ME A FREAKING HORSE FOR MY BIRTHDAY! Best. Present. Ever.  His name is Nitro and he is a 10 year old ex racehorse and I luff him.  I try and drive the 3 hours to Newcastle to visit him as much as possible. And, as I've become a recent convert to Natural Horsemanship, a form which allows horses to be as close to their natural state as possible and includes lots of groundwork and mimicry of their wild behaviours etc, I will next endeavour to embark on a bit of horse yoga. Oh yes, that's a thing.

A FEW TOO MANY JOBS

This is what the boot of my car ALWAYS looks like! 

During all of these extra-curricular activities, I was working 2 casual jobs AND teaching 7 classes of yoga a week.  (I quickly learnt that making a living as a yoga teacher was not a viable option to keep me in the lifestyle in which I am accustomed to, hence the necessity to pick up a couple of "normal" jobs in the process).  SO, thus, in conclusion, I didn't have even a spare nanosecond to answer emails let alone update my blog.

BUT, I'm back and now the blog will take an exciting twist.  Well, as about exciting as a yoga blog can get.  I'm going to talk about my various yoga TEACHING experiences, most of which have just been a comedy of errors, as well as do the odd review of yoga studios I visit along the way.  I have now cut back to 3 classes a week, which is far more sensible and manageable. After saying yes to any teaching opportunity, which apparently is very common with noobies, I suddenly hit a wall and my body, whilst still grappling with my back injury, began to protest.  Finally, practising ahimsa paid off.  (Click here for a pretty good explanation of ahimsa). I am now in more of a routine and no longer living in my car and planning yoga sessions in my head whilst at my other jobs!  The other night on the way to a class that was a 50 minute drive away, I was starving, so I quickly made myself some porridge when I was at home for 3 minutes between jobs and ate it while I was driving at 110km down the highway. Idiot!

As I've been wearing so many hats over the past 6 months, I would often ring people, mainly my Mum, on the way to or from my yoga classes and almost always finish the conversation with, "Righto, I have to go and pretend to be a yoga teacher now!"

Hopefully one day, I will have enough faith in my ability to leave out the "pretend to be" part!