Framing my Iyengar Teacher Training in Nashville with a Few Works of Art

Never having been to Nashville, I was delighted to find the warm welcome of the Iyengar Community at 12 South Yoga and Yoga Center for Nashville.  Practitioner, Sam Cooper and his wife Lily were kind enough to host me along with Alex Cleveland, owner of Yoga At Crescent Hill and Linda Smith, owner of Orbis Yoga both based in Louisville, Kentucky.

My weekend began with a Saturday morning class with Paige Seals, a certified Iyengar instructor who I'd been through a few trainings with.  She was teaching for 12 South Yoga owner, Aretha McKinny Blevins who was away at the time. It was wonderful to have a class with someone I knew and have an opportunity to experience how her teaching abilities have developed.  The room was full of teachers in training and other certified instructors and Paige handled us all with aplomb. Respectfully giving credit to her teacher peers and mentors, she took me to a new place of Sthiti (steadiness) with a very visceral "suck it up" direction.

An Indian lunch followed the class at a local restaurant with a crew of practitioners and certified teachers. Everyone was engaging and welcomed Alex, Linda, and I as if we were part of their community. Sam indulged the tourist in me by going to an art gallery showing the work of Atlanta artist, Stacie Uhinck Rose and then to couple of historical Honky Tonks:  Tootsies and Roberts.

Sunday morning was devoted to teacher training.  I began the day with a class at 12 South Yoga with Gary Jaeger, an Intermediate Junior II Level instructor.  With his Clark Kent glasses and apparent Super Man skills it would be no surprise if he had the Vibhuti (power)  to leap tall buildings in a single bound. As a Ph.D. who teaches Philosophy and Writing at Vanderbilt University, he seems very apt at presenting complex ideas in a way we can all understand. He also uses the sculpted lines of his body for clear demonstrations that are as engaging as piece of art.  

Gary assisted Nashville's Belle of Yoga, Jan Campbell at Yoga Center of Nashville for our teacher training.  Jan is a Nashville Iyengar icon born in 1933 though of course looks like she was born much, much later.  She is a lovely woman even when frustrated. She navigated us through our peer teaching sequence with a kind of grace and style that took me back to Patanjalis three gifts:  The art of Yoga,  The refinement of speech and grammar, and Ayurvedic medicine to cleanse the impurities of our body.  

Her body like Gary's seems to frame the art of who she has become: A refined vessel striving to be free of impurities. Jan articulated the importance of our choice of words and the tense in which we instruct.  Why say something as unrefined as "grab"?  Use the active tense.  Demonstrate in first person and instruct in second person, so you command your audience and are able to teach them more effectively.   

Gary added a vivid way of describing the initial demonstration of the pose.  He said you have to set up the "skelton of the pose" for the student.  As teachers and experienced practitioners know, we don't want to move forward until we've established a steady base.  Therefore only when a student has the basic framework of the pose can we as teachers begin to build on it. 

Though I look forward to more, I only got a snippet of Gary's knowledge of Yoga Philosophy and the Sutras with his discussion on the meaning and purpose of Samyama:  the synthesis of Dharna (single-pointed focus), Dhyana (meditation), and Samadhi (absorption). He articulated this to be when the known, the knower, and the instrument of knowing become one. 

As for my peer teaching, I did a "smidgen" better than I did in my last training. I felt I got a better handle on an old and tricky negative Samskara (mental imprint). My goal when I went to Nashville was not only to learn from other teachers, but also to test my levels of what certified Iyengar teacher, Rachel Mathenia recounted in her peer teaching:  BKS Iyengar's "yoga vitamins" faith (sraddha), vigor (virya), memory (smrti), concentration (samadhi), and wisdom (prajna) based on Patanjali's Yoga Sutra 1:20. 

Challenging myself in a different state, at different studios, with different students, and around different judges helped me know how well I am overcoming my afflictions. Of course, I need to keep taking my yoga vitamins. I don't have nerves of steel yet,  but I know one day with concentrated abhyasa (practice) and vairagya (detachment) I will get them.

I want to thank Sam & Lily for being such wonderful hosts, and Paige for welcoming me to her class, as well as all of the special people who were part of my Nashville adventure. I would also like to give a big Thank You to Jan and Gary for their insights and inspirations.

I will leave you and this picture I've painted in my peanut gallery with a piece of advice to teachers in training from Gary Jaeger: "Iyengar Assessment is not about seeing how well you will teach in the best of circumstances, it's about how well you will teach in the worst of circumstances."


 Namaste.