Beyond Boredom: Keeping Yin Yoga Classes Inspiring
Do you ever feel like Your Yin Yoga classes are getting boring?
The first thing to get clear on as a teacher is, are you bored or are your students bored?
The first thing to mention, most of them (your students) aren’t bored It’s in your head, dear teacher, you are bored.
They are probably not.
90% of the time, your students are not bored.
They are content to do the same thing over and over and over again because it’s more nourishing to their nervous system to have something familiar and predictable.
It’s the same reason that people who suffer from anxiety, for example, will watch the same movie over and over, right? It’s like a little feel-good fix.
You know what’s coming. It’s your favourite movie. It’s like this in their class.
From my experience, 90% of the time, the teacher is bored with the sequence, not the students.
That being said, in this episode, I will share some tips and Ideas to keep your Yin Yoga classes inspiring BOTH for you the teacher, and your students.
If You Are Bored Questions/Ideas To Ponder:
- Do you have a home practice?
- Practice with other Yin teachers?
- Study more philosophy or psychology
- Is it time for another training
- Explore YouTube, Pinterest et.
- Take time off to go on a retreat
- Meditation practice/ training
Or are your students bored? At the end of the day, humans love consistency and it’s more nourishing to their nervous system
There is a reason people keep coming to your class. Most folks don’t want creativity and a constantly changing practice. Often they want to show up on the mat and know what they’re doing.
There are whole styles of yoga where you do the same practice every time
Sometimes there are those students who are used to vinyasa classes and crave the sparkly showboat class can you speak to that and point them to how they could see the practice in a new way (mindfulness) this helps them deepen and mature their practice beyond the asana.
There is a way to deepen the practice by incorporating more Yoga philosophy and deeper teachings beyond the physical poses so rather than changing poses all the time.
- Teach with seasonal themes.
- Reverse the order of the poses
- One whole side then the other
- For experienced students Offer a choose-your-own-adventure class
- Use a physical theme (backbends for example)
- Combine poses
- Start offering themed workshops
- Include meditation
I hope you find these tips helpful Listen or watch Below for these and more
But remember Dear Yoga Teacher Yin Yoga is not Entertainment
Beyond Boredom: Keeping Yin Yoga Classes Inspiring – Listen
Beyond Boredom: Keeping Yin Yoga Classes Inspiring – Watch
Beyond Boredom: Keeping Yin Yoga Classes Inspiring – Read
WEBVTT
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Welcome yennies.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: If you are new around here. Welcome to a yen Yoga podcast
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I’m super glad that you’re here for those of you that are return listeners. Welcome back.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: before we get into today’s subject.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: which was a question, by the way.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: that somebody had asked.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And did you know that you can send me questions.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So if you have a burning in question
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Nyk Danu Yoga: now, it’s got to be Yen related or Yen adjacent. Otherwise I won’t cover it on the podcast because. This is a yen Yoga podcast after all.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: But did you know, dear listener, that you can send me questions
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Nyk Danu Yoga: the best way to do that is to find me on Instagram.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: either at Nick, Danoo, Yoga, or at Yan Yoga. Podcast both of those will be in the show notes of this episode.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yeah. And then just send me a DM, and let me know what question you have or what topic you think that’s in related that isn’t on the podcast yet that really needs to be.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And I’m happy to make that happen.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So this was one of those questions. We’ll get into it in a moment.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: The question basically was.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and this question’s come up in a few different ways from different people. But like, how do you keep it fresh when you’re teaching, or
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Nyk Danu Yoga: how do you not get bored when you’re teaching? Right? So that’s kind of what we’re going to go over.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: How do we not get bored when we’re teaching our yin classes? How do we keep it fresh? That’s what we’re going to talk about today.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: But before we do
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Nyk Danu Yoga: first reminder. Dear listener.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: this is an adult podcast with adult subject matter and adult language. Although I have the soul of a mermaid, I also have the mouth of a sailor. So if you have small ones around.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: pop some headphones in or on now.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and I wanted to share
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Nyk Danu Yoga: little bit of feedback that I have gotten on my therapeutic in training.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: At the time of this recording, it is still a 60 plus hour therapeutician training.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: although I am pondering, making it longer.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So I just feel like I want to go deeper with y’all.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: But at this time it is still a 60 plus hour. So that’s 60 h with me, and then there’s also
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Nyk Danu Yoga: a few mandatory assignments, some homework.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and then also just lots of stuff that’s not mandatory, but that you can review at your leisure. So podcast episodes, videos.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: articles, etc, etc.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So it’s probably more like
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Nyk Danu Yoga: 80 or 85. By the time you get all your homework done.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: But you get 60 h with me.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And at the time of this recording, that’s what it’s at. We’ll see what it’s going to be. If you’re listening to this in the future, it may be longer. It definitely will not be shorter.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: But I wanted to just read some very brief feedback that I got from a former student.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: This is a quick one.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I loved Nick’s passion and open mind. She was pleasant to listen to, and shared her experiences which will serve me well as an instructor.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I plan on teaching all of the tools I learned, and I’m excited to give all of the varied options that I’ve learned.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Keep doing what you’re doing. You are a total yin rockstar, and that’s from Corey. Thank you, Corey. I love the idea of being a yin rockstar.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay, my friends, let’s dive into the episode.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Oh, one more thing on the teacher training. If you wanna get on the wait list, which you definitely should do, because then you get some gifts from me plus advance registration. Notice of my training. There’s also a link for that. You just click that link you look way up to the top. You’re gonna see a picture of me. There’s gonna be a button there that you could click
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and enter your name and email, or you could go way at the bottom, or if you’re there long enough, there will be a little polite pop-up that will slide out from the side and you can get on the list there.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay, shall we dive in now for those of you watching this on Youtube. And, dear listener, if you’re not watching this on Youtube, did you know you could also watch this on Youtube?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: It’s true.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I have notes to keep me on track.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: because some of you made heard me say before, Ad. So if I have a framework it’ll keep me from talking in circles, and then, not knowing if I’ve come back to my original point.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So I do have some notes, so you will see me kind of looking away from the camera and back. And for those of you listening. If you prefer a video to an audio, know that I upload the totally unedited video to Youtube. So when you are listening. I do edit it. I take out the ums and the spaces and the moments where I stop to drink tea, because that’s very confusing
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and doesn’t feel good when you’re listening to something. But on Youtube you just get the straight up old school unpolished.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Delightfully imperfect video that you can watch. So if you are more of a visual person than an audio person, please know that those are there for you as well.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay, shall we begin?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So
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Nyk Danu Yoga: there’s a few ways that we could kind of look at this whole
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Nyk Danu Yoga: getting bored
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Nyk Danu Yoga: with teaching thing.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And of course, I’m gonna talk specifically about how you would approach this in a yin way, because this is a yin. Podcast so everything I’m saying is yin related. But I’m sure there’s takeaways for all styles of Yoga.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So the question has been.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: do you ever get bored in your yin classes? How do you keep it fresh?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Another way? I heard this phrased was, you know, there’s only 20 poses in a yin practice. Do you ever get bored? How do you keep it? Interesting?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay, so that’s kind of the 3 ways that I’ve heard this phrased.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: First of all.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I would like to say.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Dear Yoga, teacher listening
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Nyk Danu Yoga: yin Yoga is not entertainment
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Nyk Danu Yoga: one more time.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: dear Yoga, teacher listening, Yin Yoga is not designed to be entertainment.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: That being said, I have some tips for you. Okay. First question to ask yourself.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: are you bored.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: or are your students board?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I think oftentimes as teachers, we assume that because the class sequence, or whatever feels predictable for us, that the students must be lying there silently rolling, their eyes going. Oh, this again!
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Nyk Danu Yoga: But from my experience that is not the case.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So are you board, or are your students board. I’m going to break these 2 apart separately.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Your board. I had some ideas for you first, and then I’ve got some ideas for keeping your students, especially the ones that have been with you for a long time.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: trying to keep them in that sort of beginner’s mind.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay, so are you bored? Or are your students bored?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Don’t assume that because everything is uber familiar to you.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and that your students can kind of get themselves into their favorite version of whatever pose it was that you just mentioned before you were even finished describing it, that they’re bored.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: We’ll talk about that
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Nyk Danu Yoga: coming up
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Nyk Danu Yoga: so first of all. Don’t assume your students are bored
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Nyk Danu Yoga: because they probably aren’t.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I will talk about what to do with that coming up. But, dear teacher, if it’s you that’s bored.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Here are some things to consider.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Number one.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Do you have a home practice?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: If you’re not practicing at home.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: then your teaching will be less than inspired when you go out into the world
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Nyk Danu Yoga: a lot of the little Aha moments, or interesting nuggets of wisdom or fun ways to practice a pose.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: etc, etc. Come from my own practice, my home practice.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Now I come from a generation of Yoga teachers that it was assumed when you signed up for your teacher training that you had an established home practice that you were committed to practicing on your own at home. And I don’t mean with a Youtube video or with a you know at a studio. I mean you, your Matt, doing your thing.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay? Now, I realize that this is no longer the standard. And so it may not have even occurred to you
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Nyk Danu Yoga: that your home practice is an essential tool
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Nyk Danu Yoga: for keeping things
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Nyk Danu Yoga: interesting.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: connected, and soulful as a teacher.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: but it is
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Nyk Danu Yoga: so. Number one.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Do you have a home practice? If you do not.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: there’s some homework for you. Start developing a home practice.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: The next question. The next thing is, you could choose to practice with some other Yin teachers. So do you have other Yin teachers in your community?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Do you know of a Yin teacher who maybe teaches online that you could study with?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I got some classes if you’re interested, I teach in registered semesters on zoom. So it’s like usually somewhere between 10 and 12 weeks.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And I teach in seasonal themes. So we’ll talk more about that in a moment. But if you are looking for some regular study time with a senior teacher in Yen, please check again the show notes, because there’s a linky poo there for you.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: you are always welcome to join me.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: so do you have a home practice
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Nyk Danu Yoga: practicing with other yin teachers
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Nyk Danu Yoga: that could also be
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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know, like in your community or online, right?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: You could also explore videos on Youtube
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and use those as your little sort of
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Nyk Danu Yoga: awesome lab. You can watch the way other teachers sequence things or
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Nyk Danu Yoga: ways that they teach a shape or
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Nyk Danu Yoga: props that they may have used, that you wouldn’t have thought of. All of those things are great ways to keep things fresh
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Nyk Danu Yoga: for yourself, for your own practice.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Maybe it’s time to dive deeper in your study.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So the point of Yoga
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Nyk Danu Yoga: is not the Asana.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: not the physical shapes that we make with our body?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: It’s a lovely way to practice. It’s what most people practice when you say, Yoga.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: but Asana is only one small part of a practice.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So if you’re getting bored with your own practice, are you focused only on your physical practice
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Nyk Danu Yoga: as a teacher.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And could you add some other things in
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Nyk Danu Yoga: like, maybe it’s time for you to study some more philosophy.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: or maybe some psychology.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: It’s time for you to take a course, maybe a meditation training or meditation course.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So if you don’t have a meditation practice there again. Ideal opportunity
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Nyk Danu Yoga: for you, dear, teach
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Nyk Danu Yoga: to expand your own practice.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: so that then that thereby will eventually expand your own, your teaching.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So are you meditating?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Do you have a meditation practice.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So those are ways that you can start to deepen your own experience of yin yoga
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Nyk Danu Yoga: in case you didn’t know one of Yen’s nicknames is the meditative yoga. So if you’re like, what meditation, what is she talking about? Yeah, that’s part of the deal.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So if you don’t have a meditation practice that you’d have regularly. That might be one of the best ways to start inspiring your home practice and also your teaching.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: maybe it’s time for another yin training.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Oftentimes I’ll hear people say.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Oh, well, you know, cause yin’s only for the lower body, or there’s only 20 poses in yen, and although my teacher Paul, did have a very small select number of poses. Originally
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Nyk Danu Yoga: his teachers, myself, and many other senior teachers have since added to that repertoire poses and included a lot of stuff for the upper body.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And so if your first training didn’t include.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: poses for the upper body, or
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Nyk Danu Yoga: anything beyond those kind of 20 poses or so that Paul did. Then that might be a good opportunity for you to get some inspiration. Take another yin training.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I think oftentimes people think that they’re going to take 1 50 h in training, and then that’s it. Dust off your hands. You’re done. You’re good forever. Doesn’t work that way, and if you took less than 50 h it definitely does not work that way.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I had over 500 h
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Nyk Danu Yoga: at the time of this recording with Paul, and
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Nyk Danu Yoga: would will and would, when circumstances allow, happily keep adding to that forever and ever and ever.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So
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Nyk Danu Yoga: if you’ve only got a smaller training. You didn’t get a lot of things, maybe, about meditation, or about
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Nyk Danu Yoga: the upper body, or some of these things, or maybe Yin Yang theory. If you’re if you’re there was some holes, maybe in your training, then maybe it’s time to take another training.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Inspire your own practice and to help with your students.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: you could go on a retreat.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: sometimes getting away from your life and going and studying whether that retreat is an actual teacher, training or just a retreat for your own practice, sometimes getting kind of out of your routine out of your rut will really help to inspire your own practice, and then thereby inspire your classes.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And now that you know people are traveling again.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: maybe you could book yourself a retreat.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and whether that’s a teacher training in retreat, or just a public retreat.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: to take that opportunity to kind of reset and
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Nyk Danu Yoga: check out
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Nyk Danu Yoga: your practice from a new and inspired way again.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: you can explore places like Youtube.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: right? There’s so many in videos on Youtube.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And you could, you know.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: sample one a week or something, do one Youtube practice a week from a young teacher on Youtube and see if you get any little cool ways to go into a pose or interesting ideas there for your practice. You can always check that out.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Pinterest has a lot of just like images. So if you search Jenny Yoga, there’s a lot of images and fun, variations and things like that.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So this is all for you as a teacher, for your own practice, right? You cannot teach inspired interesting classes. If your own practice is not inspired and interesting.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: can you? No.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So
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Nyk Danu Yoga: that’s for those of you that are
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Nyk Danu Yoga: your board.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: with your teaching and your practice again. I’ll just go over those real quick.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: First of all, you have to ask yourself, are you board, or are your students board? If it’s you? Do you have a home practice? If not, there’s homework number one.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: practice with other yin teachers.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Study more philosophy or psychology.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Take another training. So, for example, if there was some holes in your original Yin training, maybe you take another training that
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Nyk Danu Yoga: has a different area of expertise than your first one.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Maybe you want to learn more about the upper body or the meridians, or you know you want a trauma informed training. I’ve got a great one. I might be a little biased. That includes all of that.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And again, you can click the link in the show notes if you want to learn more about that.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So maybe it’s time for another training.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: You can explore Youtube, pinterest, etc.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: You could take time off and go on a retreat.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: You could develop your own meditation practice. If you don’t currently have one, or maybe take a meditation training like a teacher training so that you can guide your students if you already have a practice for meditation. Maybe that’s something you add to your skill set so that you can start.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know, practicing that in a deeper way.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay, so that’s all. For if you are bored as the teacher.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So then the second half of this we have to ask ourselves is, Are your students board
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and don’t assume they are.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: because most of the time, from my experience, they are not.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: They are content.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: At the end of the day humans love consistency. And it’s more nourishing to our nervous system when there’s a little bit of a sense of predictability in a class, people are able to relax in a much deeper way.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So people are typically not coming to your class
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Nyk Danu Yoga: for some kind of creative, constantly changing sequence.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: They actually like showing up on the mat, and knowing what’s coming.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: In fact, there are whole style, Yoga, not yin, but other styles of Yoga, like a Shanga, for example, where people are doing the same practice every single day, sometimes for years, as they slowly learn more and more
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Nyk Danu Yoga: the exact same poses in the exact same order. They have a primary series a secondary. You get the idea.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So there are whole styles of Yoga
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Nyk Danu Yoga: where they’re always doing the same thing, and guess what your body is not the same every single day, so you may be doing the exact same sequence every single time.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: It’s not going to feel the same in your body and your students’ bodies. Each day it is different each day. It is an opportunity to see that practice with fresh eyes.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: so
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Nyk Danu Yoga: cultivating introception, which I did a whole episode on. But just briefly to describe. Introception is an awareness of what’s happening inside of you.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And this is one of Yen Yoga’s awesome superpowers.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So if you’re practicing in a way to cultivate interruption.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: or if you’re teaching your students in a way to cultivate introception.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: then there’s so much more going on there than the physical shape that you ask them to do.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: There’s so much going on in their body, in their minds in that moment.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and
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Nyk Danu Yoga: as you become a more experienced teacher. Hopefully, we start to actually speak to some of those aspects of the practice.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Not just the make this funny shape with your body.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So
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Nyk Danu Yoga: there are occasionally those students who are really like the Vinyasa junky students who really crave that kind of sparkly showboat class.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Where it’s like they’re expecting some creative, new sequence, each and every class.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and they may come to your class. That is the only time I have ever experienced a student being bored with a yen practice is if they’re actually not really a yen student. They don’t have a lot of experience with you, and they don’t really understand the difference between yin and what they do. And they’re like a Vinyasa junkie. And so they want, like some kind of creative sequence and some sparkly show boat practice every single class.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So if that happens, you just speak to it.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: you just speak to the fact that this is a yin practice. And so it’s different than your more dynamic moving, flowing practices.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and although that from the outside, if we were looking at a yen practice from the outside.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: This might look boring or predictable, or simple or not. Fancy.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: because it isn’t any of those things. It’s very simple functional practice.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: right?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Functional practices, that’s all yen is.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: but
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Nyk Danu Yoga: that does not mean there’s not a whole bunch going on.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So if you, as a teacher.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: can’t speak to interoception and awareness of what is happening inside of them. If you haven’t been practicing that in your own practice.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: that dropping inside.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: then it’s going to be difficult for you to speak to it to your students. So this is why home practice comes first.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So, for example.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: the pose will feel different every single time someone’s in class. Now. They may not be aware of it unless they’re dropping into that intro section. But how much you slept, how much caffeine you’ve had, how hydrated you are what your stress levels are like for for those of us that are still menstruating
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Nyk Danu Yoga: where you are, in your cycle, or even for those that are approaching paramedopause or menopause again, where you are hormonally this.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: what season is it? Where is the moon? And no, I’m not trying to be woo woo about this if you don’t believe that the full moon
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Nyk Danu Yoga: has a big impact on the world, go talk to an er nurse.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So where is the moon that day.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So there’s so much that could go into
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Nyk Danu Yoga: the same pose, feeling very different from week to week, from class to class.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: maybe even from the very beginning of that pose to the middle, to the end.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And so it’s your job as a teacher.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: If students, if you feel like your students, are getting bored to
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Nyk Danu Yoga: teach them that this is not about fancy show. Boat poses
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Nyk Danu Yoga: that this practice is actually about dropping inside
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and noticing what is there?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: What do the sensations in my body feel like?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Where are my thoughts?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: What emotions might be present?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: How does this change
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Nyk Danu Yoga: from one moment to the next, from one inhale to the exhale.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So this level of skill
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Nyk Danu Yoga: comes with being, and A mature teacher, but also from your home practice.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: so I never would have been able to say, for example, to my students.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Can you notice the difference in this shape.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and how it feels on your inhale
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Nyk Danu Yoga: compared to your exhale
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Nyk Danu Yoga: if I didn’t have a home practice, and I hadn’t noticed that in my own body.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So the reason I was able to queue that is because I had that Aha! In my own practice where it was like.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: oh, wow!
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Nyk Danu Yoga: This feels so different on my inhale versus my exhale
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Nyk Danu Yoga: right? So this comes from my embodied practice.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And so if you don’t have a home practice, you’re not going to be able to guide people to speak to these things. So this is why we started with, do you have a home practice?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So if you have one of those.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know, those Yoga girls, the ones that are like looking for all the fancy poses and all that.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Then your job as a teacher is to explain to them how Yen is different.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Then a more active or movement based, or vinyasa practice
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Nyk Danu Yoga: what some of those differences might be.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and then give them something else that they can do with their mind
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Nyk Danu Yoga: other than focusing on the exterior and the Asanas and the sequence.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So you can direct them, coach them, give them little hints as to other places that they could put their mind.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: If they’re bored.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: The air on their skin.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: the weight of their body on the ground.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: the sounds around them.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: their breath.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Where is their breath in their body? Can they breathe into areas of sensation?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Does the pose feel different on the inhale versus the exhale?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Does the post feel different right now at the start.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: compared to now
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and now.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And what about now
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and again? The reason that I can bring all those to the forefront is because I have experienced them in my own practice.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So this is, these are the gifts of practice.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: so there are whole styles of Yoga where they do the same thing every single class, and they’re very popular styles of Yoga. And no one goes in typically and is like
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Nyk Danu Yoga: really this again.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Now it will happen occasionally, but in my whole
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Nyk Danu Yoga: oh, God! How long have I been teaching now? 20 years of teaching? I’ve maybe had 2 students
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Nyk Danu Yoga: point out that the sequence was too similar. You could also mention that there aren’t as many poses in Yen right? If if somebody is really used to a Vinyasa practice. They may not realize that in Yen we kind of keep things simple, that we’re gonna stay within this little select group of poses and that we’re actually focusing more on the function
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Nyk Danu Yoga: versus the form itself. So again.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: this is up to you as the teacher. If this situation comes up, which it rarely does where somebody’s super bored. Now, it’s your job to point out
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Nyk Danu Yoga: what they could be paying attention to.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: there is a way to deepen the practice by incorporating, perhaps, for your students some more philosophy.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Now don’t go around just grabbing your Yoga Sutra book, if you have no understanding. If you have not studied this past your 200 h. Please don’t grab your Yoga Sutra book. Just bring it to class and read a Yoga Sutra. If you can’t actually explain and understand the nuance of it, or answer questions about it. That’s not what I’m talking about.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: But if you have done some deeper studies, why not incorporate some of that Yoga philosophy.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: or any kind of deeper teaching that takes the students beyond their obsession or your obsession. Maybe
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Nyk Danu Yoga: with just the physical poses.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So rather than changing poses all the time.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: can you direct them
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Nyk Danu Yoga: into some of these deeper things?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So, for example, I think as long as you as a teacher have already gone through the experience, so I often say I don’t share from my own experience the trials and tribulations of my life with my students until it’s a scar, not a wound.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: but when it is a scar, not a wound.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: You might have some Ahas that happened for you in Yoga practice that you could share. Right?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So can you talk about something other than just the Asana
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Nyk Danu Yoga: right? The Asana is one tiny part.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So maybe that’s Yoga philosophy, or just like, you know
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Nyk Danu Yoga: things that have happened in your own life.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know, transition or Trent sorry
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Nyk Danu Yoga: transformations that you’ve had in your own life that Yoga helped you with.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: maybe it’s talking to, you know, some of the deeper things
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Nyk Danu Yoga: in your life, or about this practice.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So this is beyond the physical poses. So rather than changing the poses all the time, can we
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Nyk Danu Yoga: talk to the deeper levels of Yoga practice?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Here’s an example. For many, many years. I never included poetry in my classes.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and the reason I didn’t is because all of the classes that I went to other than one other than
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Nyk Danu Yoga: my friend Mediev. She was probably not listening to this, but
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Nyk Danu Yoga: her. Her readings were very soulful.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: but other than other than her. Anytime, I went to a class, and the teacher shared a poem.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: It was all just a little bit
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Nyk Danu Yoga: good vibes, only Pollyanna flowery, you know, Hippy stuff.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and you know nothing wrong with that. That’s your vibe. But that’s not my vibe.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Not at all.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I want to dig deep.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I want to get into the shadows. I want to
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Nyk Danu Yoga: see things in a new way. I want to swim in the deep zone of the pool, you know. I want to dive down deep.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I want it
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Nyk Danu Yoga: myself and my students to feel okay with understanding and embracing their shadows. I want poetry that breaks some paradigms. So that’s how I roll. And so because
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I had always been in these classes, and the poetry was so kind of like
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Nyk Danu Yoga: cowboys, rainbows, etc. It just didn’t resonate with me.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: If it does with you. Awesome. You’re gonna find tons of poetry like that rock on with yourself. But for me it didn’t. So this is why I never included poetry readings in my class, because it would have felt like
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I was
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Nyk Danu Yoga: not being myself
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Nyk Danu Yoga: until I found online. And I’m still always hunting them down, and I always save them in my phone when I find them. Specifically if those of you who are listening to this
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Nyk Danu Yoga: her name is Myeluna, MAYA. LUNA. And
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Nyk Danu Yoga: you can find her on Instagram. I’m going to try to find her right now, but her
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Nyk Danu Yoga: handle changes all the time, so hopefully she won’t have changed her handle by the time you hear this. But let’s see what she’s going by now.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: the Venus path at the Venus path. So I discovered my Luna. I had a few poems kind of tucked aside. And then I discovered my Luna and wow! Her poems just they had my name written all over them. So I started saving those and sharing them in class.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: so yeah, if there’s a
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Nyk Danu Yoga: a poem that you or a poet that you really like, you can, you know, include that poetry in your class as a way to
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Nyk Danu Yoga: kind of. Set the tone for the practice.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: If you’re if that’s your thing, if not, don’t do that.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So there’s a way to deepen the practice. Maybe that’s Yoga philosophy. Maybe that’s a deeper teaching of your life. Again when it’s a scar, not a wound. Maybe it’s an Aha that you had with a student. Of course we never want to talk about a specific student in class, but you could talk about a situation. Maybe it’s a poem. Who knows? But can you link to the fact that in your class that there is a whole lot more to this than just the damn Osama’s?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: They’re lovely. We love them. That’s not the whole thing.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Could you teach with seasonal themes?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So one of the things that we do in my teacher training is, we learn about the 5 elements and the seasons.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: according to Taoism and traditional Chinese medicine.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And so we learn about the meridians. In brief, but more importantly, the sinew channels. Because, as Yin Yoga teachers, that’s actually what we’re accessing.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And
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Nyk Danu Yoga: when you understand which organs
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and which sinew channels are connected to which elements in which season that can allow you to teach with a seasonal theme.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So, for example, I might choose
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Nyk Danu Yoga: more poses that
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Nyk Danu Yoga: access those sinew channels of
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Nyk Danu Yoga: the bladder meridian and the kidney meridian in the wintertime. Now, I’m not just going to do that. I’m always going to do a well rounded practice, but that might inform the poses that I choose. And again, you shouldn’t do that if you don’t actually have an understanding of it. And also, dear teacher, please do not go around
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Nyk Danu Yoga: giving your students meridian theory in your classes. This is not skillful unless you have deep study in
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Chinese medicine. Medical Chi gong, taoism, etc. So, please, I know if you learned it in your training, you’re tempted to just meridian everything. Don’t do it, don’t do it.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: But could you teach with a seasonal theme, even though I have studied Tcm.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Fairly in depth for about 2 and a half in between 2 and a half and 3 years in Chinese Medicine College before I dropped out.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I still don’t teach.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know, meridian stuff
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Nyk Danu Yoga: in my class, but
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I will choose my sequences based on the Sineu channels that are connected to the meridians, and so that can make it interesting for you as the teacher.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: but also for your students.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: You know, they get to explore more poses and more variety of poses that way. You kind of, do you know these shapes that focus on these areas in the spring these ones in the summer you get the idea.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So that’s an idea.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Could you just reverse the order of the poses?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: What happens if you took your exact same sequence and taught it backwards.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: It’s pretty cool. Actually, I play with that often.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: or you invert it. You teach the middle first, and then you book end of the rest.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Here’s a practice that Paul used to do with us which can be really interesting. Now, I wouldn’t do this necessarily with
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Nyk Danu Yoga: these next 2 are only for I would say, experienced in students. So I wouldn’t do these with beginners. But if you’ve got a group that’s been practicing with you for a while, and you’re worried that they’re getting bored. You could do this. Paul has us do this
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Nyk Danu Yoga: typically at least once in every training
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Nyk Danu Yoga: where you do asymmetrical poses.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and you do one whole side of the body before you switch to the other side.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So each pose that’s asymmetrical, you do say, for you could do left or right doesn’t matter, but you say you do the whole right side of your body
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Nyk Danu Yoga: with rebounds, and then you pause
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Nyk Danu Yoga: for a longer rebound. And you really notice what is the difference between the right and the left side of my body, the side of my body where I’ve done all these shapes the side of my body where I’ve done no shapes yet.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and then you continue on the other side.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So that’s a really interesting practice that you could do. If you’ve got a group that you think is, you know, they’re fairly experienced, and they’re getting bored.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: One thing I love to do with my students that are experienced is what I call a choose your own adventure class.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So rather than me, sequencing exactly which poses I want them to do, I’ll say.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: choose a backbend of your choice.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Choose a forward bend of your choice, choose a pose for the hit, but it bend of your choice.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Now, this again only is going to work with experienced students because they have to know that there’s a few, and they have to kind of have a favorite before this will work.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So that’s a choose your own adventure class. So that could be a fun thing to do with a really experienced group of students.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: You could pick a theme based on the area of the body.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Maybe you do a class where you’re mostly doing backbens. Now, that being said, please always finish that off with a twist, a lateral pose, and some kind of a forward fold.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: even if it’s just child’s pose doesn’t have to be equal, though you don’t have to do equal poses.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I know that there’s sometimes people have this pose counterpose idea, but you don’t have to do that. And if you’re curious about that one, I did a whole episode on sequencing.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So maybe you decide I want to do a class that’s backbends. And so you do mostly a back bends. Then maybe you do a twist and something lateral, and then you take some kind of a forward fold just to kind of round the practice out for their spine.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Or maybe you decide.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: let’s get into people’s hips. And so you decide you’re going to do a class that’s got a hip focus, right? So physical area of the body can also be
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Nyk Danu Yoga: a way that you can keep things fresh.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Can you combine poses?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So, for example.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Sometimes I’ll teach a pose like
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Nyk Danu Yoga: butterfly
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Nyk Danu Yoga: or dragonfly, or half dragonfly, and I’ll get people to stay upright, and then I’ll do some upper body stuff while we’re sitting there. So they’re sort of inner leg is sort of starting to marinate, starting to open up in a really gentle kind of passive way, or maybe not gentle, depending on how tight they are in that area.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: while we do some stuff for the neck, for the shoulders, etc. And then at the end of that. I say, anybody who doesn’t feel this and wants to fold forward can fold forward for the last little bit.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Right? So all I did. There was, I only took, say, half the time
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Nyk Danu Yoga: to tell people to fold into it, and the other half I kept people upright with the legs in whatever shape you’ve chosen, and multitask a little. Did some upper body, some neck, etc, some shoulders.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So that’s a good way to do it. Can you combine poses?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Can you take a pose like? Let’s do a really simple one, for example, dragonfly.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And can you do dragonfly in the middle
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and then maybe get them to turn to one leg and fold over their leg
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Nyk Danu Yoga: for a while. Then maybe, they turn that dragonfly into a lateral pose. They bend sideways over that leg.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Then they come back to the middle for a little bit, and then they do the same on the other side. So you see how I’m taking like a simple pose like dragonfly.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and I’m adding extra things in that. You could hold for a minute or 2 at a time.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and that’s the way to keep dragonfly fresh.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Also, really good for those of you who teach and don’t have a lot of time in your in classes, sometimes
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Nyk Danu Yoga: having multiple things happening in a pose is the only way it’s going to happen. If you’ve only got 60 or 75 min for a class.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So could you combine poses
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Nyk Danu Yoga: if right now you’re thinking, wait! What upper body stuff again.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I know that the Ogs Paul. Bernie has a Bernie has a few upper things, upper body things in his book. But there’s so so many more that have been added to by season. Dn, teachers. So if you are looking for more of that
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Nyk Danu Yoga: try to find a teacher that has a whole bunch of upper body stuff in their training and take another training. I got a boatload of it.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So do many others
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Nyk Danu Yoga: so you could combine poses. You could start offering themed workshops. So maybe you don’t necessarily want to do like a seasonal theme, for you know
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Nyk Danu Yoga: your class every week, but maybe you know, once a quarter you offer a themed workshop.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and that could be on any theme that you want, and when you start offering themed workshops as a teacher it kind of pushes you out of your box a little bit, because you gotta prepare right in a class. It’s a little easier to just show up with your sequence, and
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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know no deep thoughts, no poems, no whatever, and, bing! Bang! Boom! Get her in getting done. But when you teach a workshop you have to kind of cultivate a theme. You have to come up with talking points you maybe have to find quotes. You may even have, like a little slideshow presentation or something, and so maybe offering more themed workshops
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Nyk Danu Yoga: seasonally might be a way for you to kind of start to
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Nyk Danu Yoga: picture what that might look like if you added some of those elements, then to your weekly classes.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay, could you include meditation?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So I want to be really clear here that I really not encouraging you to guide meditation. If you don’t have a meditation practice, and you haven’t taken any meditation training.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So I just want to say that that we we shouldn’t really be guiding things that we’ve never studied.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: But if you have some meditation experience, if you have a meditation practice, if you’ve taken some meditation teacher training, maybe you’ve even written some guided meditations of your own.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: What if you started including meditation in your classes?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Because that is actually kind of the point like these funny shapes that we make with our body, not the point.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: The point is to create a body that is stable and healthy, with good chief flow, so that we can do these deeper practices right? So maybe starting to include meditation. And again, if you don’t have a meditation practice, that’s not going to be a good fit for you, or if you haven’t taken any meditation training.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: But if you’re interested in those things and you start studying them for your own practice, then you can start sharing them.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So just to summarize that section of how can we make our classes
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Nyk Danu Yoga: more interesting for students if they are bored?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: First thing to mention. Most of them aren’t. It’s in your head, your teacher. You are bored. They are probably not 90% of the time. Your students are not bored. They are content to do the same thing over and over and over again.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: because it’s more nourishing to their nervous system to have something that is familiar and predictable. It’s the same reason that
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Nyk Danu Yoga: people that suffer from anxiety, for example, will watch the same movie over and over
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Nyk Danu Yoga: right. It’s like a little feel good fix. You know what’s coming. It’s your favorite movie. So this is like their class, right? If they do the similar sequence all the time, or similar poses. They’re probably not mad at that.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Now, there is the odd, maybe not even 10% of students
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Nyk Danu Yoga: who might be those sparkly show boat Vinyasa students you like
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Nyk Danu Yoga: are all about the fancy sequence.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and if that is in your class, if those people come and they’re bored. Now it’s on you, dear teacher to make this practice interesting for them.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: What is interesting about a yin practice beyond the physical shapes?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: There’s your work.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and if you don’t know, try a home practice.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Could you start offering more philosophy or psychology, or some of the deep deeper teachings of these physical rather than just the physical poses?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Could you.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: you know, include some
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Nyk Danu Yoga: transformative things in your own life, some journeys you’ve been on
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Nyk Danu Yoga: in your own life again when it’s a scar, not a wound
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Nyk Danu Yoga: could you start incorporating some seasonal themes?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: You could reverse the order of the poses
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Nyk Danu Yoga: you could do Paul’s
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Nyk Danu Yoga: practice, which I quite love actually of doing one doing only asymmetrical poses, so so poses that have a left and a right, and doing one whole side of the body, and then pausing to notice and then doing the other side
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Nyk Danu Yoga: for experienced students. You could offer a choose your own adventure class.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: where you just call out, then, the kind of pose you are guiding, and they choose. Which one
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Nyk Danu Yoga: could you use an area of body?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Perhaps
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Nyk Danu Yoga: maybe you do, backbens. Maybe you do hips. Maybe you do
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Nyk Danu Yoga: a whole sequence of like
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Nyk Danu Yoga: upper back.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: neck, shoulders like, who knows? Right? Can you use an area of the body? Paul does this on his. What was a DVD. It’s now streaming on pranamaya.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and for those of you who don’t know that Paul actually did have a yin DVD. He does. He has the anatomy DVD. Which is not yin specific. It’s for all styles of yoga. But then he has a yin yoga, an old school yen yoga practice with a few practices on it
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Nyk Danu Yoga: so you could. You could check that out.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: But he has on there like a hip series and a spine series, right? So you could pick an area of the body as your
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Nyk Danu Yoga: your theme to keep things fresh.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: you could combine poses.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: so is there a pose where the legs are doing something for a little while. Maybe you could add some upper body or some side body in with that again. The examples I used were
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Nyk Danu Yoga: dragonfly, half dragonfly, butterfly.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Could you start? Start offering themed workshops
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Nyk Danu Yoga: as a way to sort of
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Nyk Danu Yoga: push yourself as a teacher to encourage those students that do want to go deeper that do want a little bit more. They can sign up for your workshops, and then you can take some of those little things from that workshop and sprinkle them into your classes afterwards as well.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Could you include meditation? Now, again, if you haven’t studied meditation? If you don’t have a meditation practice, don’t do that.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: That’s an opportunity for you to grow as a Yoga practitioner before you share it. As a Yoga teacher you have to share from your own practice, lived experience. But for those of you that do have a meditation practice, are you including even just 5 min of meditation in your classes?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And if not, why not?
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Nyk Danu Yoga: And then.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: in summary to close this episode.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: I’m going to say once again.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: please remember, dear teacher.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Yin Yoga is not entertainment
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Nyk Danu Yoga: in Yoga is not entertainment.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: We are not trying to entertain our students
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Nyk Danu Yoga: with all kinds of fancy, sparkly things.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: instead.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: focus on holding brave space for your students
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and nudging them into a deeper experience of themselves.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: As a teacher, learn to cultivate introception for yourself.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: so that then you understand how to guide or coach, or encourage interception with your students.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: because Yin Yoga
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Nyk Danu Yoga: is an inside out practice
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Nyk Danu Yoga: not an outside in practice.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: So remember, Yen Yoga is not entertainment.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and if you are bored doesn’t mean your students are bored, but I’ve given you some great ideas
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Nyk Danu Yoga: on either side of that coin, whether your board or your students are bored.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Okay, dear teacher, I hope that you found this helpful.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: Please feel free to reach out and let me know what you think of this episode again, you can find me on Instagram, at at Nick, Daniel Yoga, or at Yen Yoga. Podcast both of those will be linked in the show notes.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and let me know what you thought of this episode, what your takeaways were.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: If you are watching this on Youtube, would you mind subscribing
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and liking this video and then leave me a comment. What did you take away from this episode? Were there any Ahas or ideas that I shared, that you hadn’t thought of that can help to keep either your own practice fresh or your teaching fresh? If so, let me know in the comments.
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Nyk Danu Yoga: and until we meet again.
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00:45:29.570 –> 00:45:30.710
Nyk Danu Yoga: bye, for now.
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Anatomy for Yoga with Paul Grilley
Hang Drum Music by Fred Westra
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