Yoga Girl: Finding Happiness, Cultivating Balance and Living with Your Heart Wide Open by Brathen Rachel

Author:Brathen, Rachel [Brathen, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473619593
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2015-08-05T16:00:00+00:00

Every night I would work on my sequences, trying to write things down so that I wouldn’t be so nervous about teaching, but failing miserably every time. I cannot prepare a class. It’s impossible. Even now, if I try to prepare what I’m going to teach, I always end up throwing everything out the window the second I see the class and create my flow on the spot. The people in class are the ones teaching me everything I need to know about what to do. It’s impossible to prepare when I don’t know who is going to attend and what their energy levels will be.

But I tried hard during my first days of teaching and would always end up driving to class in the morning with a knot in my stomach—I was so nervous! But the class always went well, the words came easily to me, and I loved guiding people through extra-long Savasanas. One day the owner of the hotel I had my classes in front of came to participate. “I’ve been hearing about these classes of yours,” he said. “I hear you’re good!” Apparently word was getting around about my classes and had reached all the way to the owner, who lived in the United States.

After class he invited me to breakfast, and before I knew it, I was hired by the hotel to teach yoga on a regular basis as an in-house yoga instructor. I booked my first teacher training that very day. If I was really going to pursue this, I needed to make sure I had all the credentials. I completed my first 200 hours of teacher training sessions feeling very confident. I had already been teaching for a while, and everything I knew about sequencing and anatomy I had learned on my own. My real studies since then have come from workshops, training sessions, and practice with amazing teachers all over the world and from immersing myself in the world of yoga. And from my students, of course!

The yoga community on the island started to grow. I added classes and invited teachers from abroad to come lead retreats at the resort. Fast-forward two years, and I was teaching twenty-four classes a week, mostly Vinyasa-based classes but also meditation, restorative yoga, and SUP yoga, which is yoga classes on stand-up paddle­boards on the ocean. Classes were big and I was working my butt off to evolve as a teacher.

All the while I was working hard on my own mat. Through a mix of restorative yoga to heal and create flexibility and a dynamic practice to build strength, my back was feeling great. I had built a lot of muscle tone and was even getting the hang of inversions. Handstands, headstands, forearm stands, and advanced poses I never in my wildest dreams thought would be a part of my practice started coming my way with ease. I took the dogs for long walks in between classes (by now we had three), went for runs on the beach, and continued practicing strong, dynamic vinyasa every day.

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