I often get in a fix when asked this simple question 🙂
hmm, so what exactly is my style of teaching?
More than a decade ago, yoga was just a form of exercise (how much I don’t like to describe yoga as an exercise now) to me. Neither was I inclined to know about the foundation of this practice nor was I interested in adopting it as a way of life. Discussions with people around the practice were largely focused on hot yoga, yoga to loose weight and on yoga being a low fee / free form of workout.
Little did I know back then that in a decade’s time, yoga will define my own way of existence on this planet.
Coming back to the yoga type. At times what flashes to my mind when asks about my teaching style is like yoga is some diet form. A ketto diet, A GM diet or an ayurvedic diet or a vegan diet and what not.
First things first – Yoga is yoga or to say it more exact – Yog is Yog.
The closest I can define yog is through Patanjali’s sutra / verse that I learnt during my own teacher training:
“YogaÅ› citta-vritti-nirodhaḥ“ i.e. “Yoga is the restraint of fluctuations/patterns of consciousness.”
The ancient texts / scripts date back yoga to more than 5000 years old. Without going into deep details I can briefly put here that a Hindu God shared the wisdom of yoga with his wife that was overheard by a crocodile who in his next avatar (often Saint Patanjali is said to be the reincarnated version of that crocodile) wrote the sutras. That classic form of yoga is called the ‘hath yoga’.
Hath yoga can be deciphered to be the most traditional form of yoga. Ofcourse, how everything gets modified and revised, that form of yoga too was furthered to different styles / forms by people, saints, texts and hearsay. On the internet, plethora of information is available on what are the forms of yoga. From asana styles of #Vinyasa to #Ashtanga to #Sivananda to #Isha yoga to #hotyoga and from forms of yoga such as #bhaktiyoga, #rajayoga, #karmayoga, #jnanayoga, yoga is a vast subject.
I did my 200 Hours teacher training in #hathayoga. Though I have a credit name for the style I teach but over years of practice and introspection I have come to the conclusion that #yog is #yog for me. A mix of #asana (only what I can perform easily), #pranayama, #meditation and #spiritual #reflections comprise my practice. I sometimes believe that I have risen from the predefined style of practice and just enjoy and delve deep into whatever I follow – I like to call it V’s Yog. And somewhere, this constant surrendering helps me get a new ‘aha’ each time I mindfully roll out a mat to practice V’s Yog.
In the end I just want to say that acing a particular style (s) is good if that is what one wants to do and yes, to tell someone that this is my style of teaching is expected but discovering that yog is yog is just grace .
Namaste
Varuna