Anamaya’s yoga deck & its stunning view (image via anamaya.com)
The tropical yoga retreat experience – a time to get away, rest, and reconnect. Costa Rica has become a primary yoga destination for people from around the world. What really happens in the retreat setting?
IAYB sponsor Anamaya Resort in Montezuma, Costa Rica is situated on a cliff in the jungle looking over the Pacific Ocean. The three-year old resort, with a capacity for about 40 guests, has worked hard to develop strong ties with the local community.
I could have asked Anamaya co-owner Geoff McCabe about the centre’s yoga retreats, spa services, yoga teacher trainings or the infinity pool (which I’m kind of obsessed with). But I wanted to know how they’ve integrated into the community and how they support local businesses. Continue Reading
Image via Decolonizing Yoga FB page.
Kula Annex, one of the few studios with a positive space initiative, apparently offers “consent cards” to indicate if you want to be touched for adjustments (or anything) in their yoga classes.
As they state on their Facebook page:
we keep green + purple consent cards that read “yes, thank you” and “no, thank you.” we invite students to place either by the top corner of their mat at every practice to indicate to teachers whether or not they consent to physical adjustments. ultimately, consent helps us to cultivate a safer space.
What do you think? Should other yoga studios and teachers follow suit? Would you use consent cards if your studio had them?
Jay Fields isn’t afraid to confront the grace and grit of both teaching yoga and living life. She digs into these subjects regularly on her blog, Grace and Grit. In her new book, Teaching People, Not Poses: 12 Principles for Teaching Yoga with Integrity, she explores how to find expertise and vulnerability as a yoga teacher.
The slim self-published volume outlines 12 ways that yoga teachers can bring their full selves into their teaching practice and reflect on why they’re teaching yoga in the first place. The principles embody wisdom (“Don’t take it all so seriously”), humility (“If you don’t know, say you don’t know”), honesty (“Remember that your students are people”), and pragmatism (“Learn anatomy”).
Each principle gets its own chapter, with examples from Fields’ 14 years of yoga teaching experience and outside-the-yoga-studio learning. After outlining the principle, Fields offers reflection questions to take it deeper.
Jay Fields and I had a long Skype conversation about the book, the paradox of self-promotion, and the crucial difference between ‘integrity’ and the overused idea of ‘authenticity.’ Here are some of the gems from our talk.
IAYB: When I was reading Teaching People, Not Poses, it struck me as the perfect companion to Donna Farhi’s Teaching Yoga. But whereas Farhi’s book focused on the teacher-student relationship, you focus on the teacher’s relationship with self.
JF: Thanks, that’s a real compliment. Sometimes I think the yoga teaching world can get so caught up in the question, “How do I help others?” that we forget that the original question is, “How do I be me in a way that’s real?” Continue Reading
If you have a cat, you’ve probably already figured out how to do yoga with it. Step 1: unroll yoga mat; step 2: do yoga; step 3: it’s up to you, but usually involves repeated attempts to push away cat or just forgetting your practice and cuddling.
YouTube kitty sensations Kodi (patchy white and black) and Shorty (black longhair) show us how it’s done. There is nothing to not love about this!
[via DesignTaxi.com and IAYB friend, Lindsay Smith]
