Posture

 I am still thinking about a workshop I attended weeks ago at a studio that did not teach Iyengar yoga.

 I was sitting on my mat before class when a student put her mat beside mine and i looked over, she appeared to be around 10 but since her mom wasn't with her i will adjust that estimate to 19. I said something to her about Roger Cole and she said 'I don't even know who the teacher is, i am in the teacher training and it's required we are here'...  there was so much wrong with that statement for me that every muscle in my face froze.

  I will skip over my thought of getting up and going over to offer to create a diversion if he would like to make a run for it and move to the other thing, her slumping posture .

 Looking at her sitting in this way caused me to have a flashback to many years ago when i attended a workshop with a teacher who followed me around beating on my back while screaming obscenities (jk), at one point i looked up and the teacher was standing in front of me holding 2 long poles while their eyes calculated the cost/benefit ratio of sending someone to the store to buy super glue to have them permanently attached to my back. They discarded that thought, handed them to me, told me to put them across my upper back, under my armpits and hold them with my hands toward the ends, there was an implied 'for the rest of your life'.

 All of this caused the words 'If that teacher was here, they would be stalking you' to want to come out of my mouth so i started silently saying 'no, no don't say that' to myself while choking back a fit of the giggles that was trying to bubble up. My brain finally chipped in and i said 'he's great, you'll love him' as i turned back to the front while patting myself on the back for not grabbing her by both arms and yelling 'promise me you will attend class every week with roger cole for 2 years before you ever teach a class, promise me, promise me, promise me'. This took so much restraint on my part, i felt i deserved some kind of great restraint medal. She however did not look like she was planning our shopping trip to help me choose fabric for the ribbon on my cool new medal, she looked more like she was thinking 'how on earth did i end up sitting by this weird woman with the facial tic'.

 The point, as if there is one, is that i keep wondering how i would react to sitting in a class and have someone slumping walk in to teach. This is going to happen to students somewhere when she receives her piece of paper, 200 hrs, 500 hrs, whatever is not enough to reverse a lifetime of bad posture.  I don't actually notice my teacher's posture (they probably all just yelled 'why don't you start' in unison), they're not overly rigid like military nor are they slumped, there is no extreme to make me think what is up with their posture, they simply stand up straight.

 There was a time i would have said no way would i stay for the class but now i know that is not true. I sit in class while Geetaji instructs us to do the exact opposite of what she is doing, at the last yoganusasanum she spent a long time teaching the actions of the feet while her feet were doing the exact opposite, she even said nobody say then why are her feet like that, so i know that if Geetaji was slumping I would still feel grateful to attend her class. Which leaves me wondering just how i would react, i really have no idea so i am thinking i need to have that experience to know. I am now on the constant lookout for a 19 yr old slumping iyengar yoga teacher and I will let you know.

Sequences

 I find even in smaller groups, say the Iyengar community, I spend so much time disagreeing with most of what people say i could write a blog about it..oh wait..

 I have found sequences to be an odd thing. I have never thought they are owned, I guess they could be considered intellectual property but for me Nope Never has that thought crossed my mind. Once taught if i experienced as a student, heard, read, watched, was told...I have always felt they were something to be shared, like say...yoga

Bikram a few years back decided he owned a sequence and tried to copywrite it, which caused people to put him down because after all you can't own a sequence. Prashant Iyengar stated the below in an interview at the time:

'Vanessa Calder, chairperson, OSYU, said, "One cannot copyright, or own in any manner, an exercise routine."

Traditional proponent of yoga, Prashant Iyengar, son of the legendary BKS Iyengar, also rejected the idea of any form of trademark or ownership over yoga. "We are not teaching a new brand of yoga, though our pupils like to call it 'Iyengar Yoga.' We are following the age-old traditional methods of yoga given by Patanajali. We can't claim ownership or name it separately; this is traditional knowledge, it is eternal, it can't be claimed by an individual," he said.'

and i knew nobody in the Iyengar community who disagreed

But lately...at yoganusasanam Geetaji stated people could not take notes during the event, i thought she was going to end that statement with 'because it is distracting from ones practice' but no she said 'it's stealiing', I literally groaned, now the sequence is a possession, owned ,mine mine mine. I recently heard from someone who said a teacher had stated not to share a sequence they taught, mine mine mine. What were they saying about Bikram at that time, 'darn why didn't I think of that first' since now they are knocking on the same door

I used to email friends sequences i found or wrote down. I then wrote a program and key the sequences in where I can share sequences with those same friends. I have never asked a teacher if i could share their sequences because i have never believed they owned them, this is no different to me then us all meeting for lunch and me saying oh let me tell you what was taught yesterday, it is limited to the lunch group. However through the process of creating the site it took me about 5 minutes to find I don't think like others.

On one side there are the teachers, if you write my sequence down you are stealing and don't share, and on the other are students who also have an amazing attachment to sequences. I have never thought wow that was a great sequence, i will love it and cuddle it and keep it close, it's to enjoy, practice and share that's it, there is no deeper meaning in my heart for it.

I am at a total loss on the sequence thing. If you share a sequence you still have it and it has not been diminished in any way, I have also never thought oh now that i have seen a list of asanas on a piece of paper i never need to attend a class by that teacher since that experience is exactly the same as the other, so it doesn't affect the teacher in any way that i can see.

I have heard Laurie Blakeney say she didn't care if people wrote/shared sequences because she didn't own it, it's not hers. Arunji has also stated that what he teaches is not his, as they both have said, it all comes from Guruji. I believe lately there is some shift from this.

so I put my program on the web to make sharing with a small group of friends easy and when i pay for the site they constantly ask me if i want ,for just a little more they could move it up in the google search hits and I always say NO I don't want it found, they are usually a little surprised..'uh you don't want your site found' and i reply NO while thinking 'you have no idea'