Day #23 - Lost in Translation

When I first started Iyengar yoga the beginner’s class was 1.5hrs.

It was slow and methodical. It sometimes felt like we spent more time getting props and watching the teacher demonstrate than actually doing active yoga.

There was attention to detail to the detriment of the class.

There was a sense that the teacher was focused on perfection and alignment and detail were more important than moving the body.

This is my memory of beginner classes when I first started Iyengar yoga.

10 years later when I started to teach, not much had changed.

And then just 3 years later there was a big shift.

The message came from Pune to the west that the classes need to be more dynamic, that we need to get beginners to just move and feel their bodies, stop using so many props and stop teaching so much intricate detail.

But I don’t know if all the countries got this message?

I don’t know how it is that if they were always teaching beginner classes in Pune, fast and dynamic then how that did not make it home to the western countries and we were doing it so differently?

Maybe they were not always teaching dynamically like this, as there are many things that BKS Iyengar did on his journey and changed along the way as he learned.

He too was mortal and it was not that he would master something the first time, we sometimes get that impression because of his book Light On Yoga, but we have to remember that it was a journey and we do not know what he did to get to where he got and that many things he must have adapted along the way.

Was this was just another adaptation?

The studio where I teach made the big shift, all beginner classes went to 1hr long and we (the teachers) had to change our teaching style.

We had to move and get the class moving. We stopped calling for props and demand more of the students to just do and not worry about how well they are doing, to shift the focus from perfecting an asana to just making a shape.

I assumed this happened all over the world, but I learned from my friend today who watched the beginner’s class with me that this is not how they teach beginners where she is from, they are still conducting beginners classes like we were 15 years ago.

Thanks you for your patience, I am now ready to bring my points together.

So much of what we pick up here in India and what actually makes it home sound is questionable.

So many things we gather here are lost, confused, misunderstood, understood but changed, accommodated to suit us, our culture etc.

The pure fact you are reading this in English, but what I heard/saw was in Indian English and Sanskrit, of course, something will be lost in translation.

So where is this going?

My point is, India is the best place to experience that nothing is fixed and nothing is permanent and every day in India you experience this fluidity.

It feels that they are having a joke on us, telling us one thing and the next class, something else.

Things are often being turned on their heads… Not to confuse but to un-condition us.

Being here in class is less about learning the asana and how to do a pose and so much more about challenging our perception.

Flipping things so that we might learn to be open, to be receptive.

Teaching us not to be attached… to expect nothing and be ready for anything.

I’d love to know in the comments what beginner classes are like in your country.