The video has no picnic baskets, but it is smarter than average...

By happy accident, I ended up with a yoga personal training session.  Which is to say, the other people who normally show up for the yoga class I take didn’t make it and I was the only student.  It has happened to me once before, but I forgot how different it is.

For background, I am not a particularly gifted yogi.  I’m more like Yogi (“hand over the picnic basket!).  I take yoga not because I’m good at it, but because I am bad at it.  I need to spend conscious time on flexibility and I need to unplug the whirring fan of my brain.  I tend to be a back-of-the-class student so I can see what to do and mostly not be seen as I try to figure out exactly how I’m supposed to get my foot over there with all those other body parts in the way.

When I am the only student, there is no incognito.

What that meant, in the moment, was that I got to learn things that were directly relevant to me.  When class is large, a teacher’s recommendation to lengthen one side of the body or lower shoulders or level hips may or may not apply to me.  That day, it was my movement compensations that were on view and under scrutiny.

It made me realize, again, why personal training is both important and scary.  I learned a lot about how to move my body, my particular, history-laden body that struggles more to do things on the left, that probably shouldn’t interlace fingers anymore, that needs to keep an eye on knee alignment.  I learned about what I was doing wrong.  I also learned about what I was doing right.  The instructor encouraged as she corrected, gave me a feeling of safety by recognizing where I was and gently moving me toward where I should go.

I am grateful for the good example of that teacher.  May I do likewise!