Yoga teachers should be empathetic, attentive to students' needs, abilities
Published Saturday November 7th, 2009
Stephanie Calhoun-Guitar wants to teach you how to relax.
Calhoun-Guitar is a yoga teacher and owns Satori - Centre for Well-being. She said yoga reduces stress, heals injuries, and promotes healthy living.
"(Yoga) naturally calms the body, it calms the mind, it slows your heart rate down, and it eases the anxiety," she said.
She said teaching yoga is much different from teaching aerobics and other fitness classes.
"The fitness world is more focussed on 'How do I change my appearance? How can I lose weight?' rather than 'How do I change my state of being?'" she said.
"(In yoga), you sweat, you detoxify, you build strength, (and) you build stamina and endurance. All the things (you're) looking for in a physical activity, you get in a yoga practice, but the difference is what you get with your mind and your emotions and your overall state of wellness."
Calhoun-Guitar started practising yoga at home when she was a teenager. She stopped when she injured herself.
"I did yoga according to how the book said I should do this particular pose. It wasn't the way I should have done it because my body structure wasn't conducive to the way the book said I should do it. So I ended up tearing a ligament and being injured and not being able to do yoga and my other fitness activities."
After years of seeing doctors and taking pain medication for her injury, Calhoun-Guitar rehabilitated herself by properly practising yoga. She wanted to take what she learned from her injury and rehabilitation and teach it to others. Four years ago she became certified and started teaching.
She takes her students through a series of movements and poses, some lasting for several minutes, and teaches them to meditate through breathing techniques.
She teaches three branches of yoga: Kripalu, Vinyasa, and Yin. She said she enjoys teaching Yin yoga most because it can relieve chronic pain.
"I've seen a lot of change in people's condition. People are off of pain medications. People who used to have constant back spasms don't have it anymore. They're back to running. They're picking up their kids again," she said.
"Yin yoga is not just stretching your muscles but stretching the deep tissues right down to your joints. Since it works with the connected tissues, it has a lot of therapeutic benefits."
Calhoun-Guitar will soon start training other yoga teachers to teach Yin yoga.
Tammy Blyth also teaches yoga at her Yog-alicious! studio. She's certified in Hatha, Tibetan, Yin, Restorative, and Laughter yoga.
"In this world people have to put up walls because life gets so busy and there's no time to really relax and figure out what's really going on with everyday issues, and I think (Laughter yoga) just allows people to be themselves and feel real and not have to put up faces for other people. It lets you really feel the true joy of laughing like when you're a kid. It's really amazing."
Blyth also teaches candlelight yoga.
"We do (yoga) basically in the dark with candles. It's more calming because at night time you don't want a powerful, energetic (practice)."
Blyth has been practising yoga for 14 years. She started teaching in May.
Like Calhoun-Guitar, she teaches her students movements, poses, and breathing techniques.
She said she doesn't always plan her classes beforehand.
"I know some (teachers) will write it down, but for me, I just visualize and that's how I plan my classes because (I) can feel the energy when people come in. If they're feeling tired, I can change a class as I'm going through the flow, so it doesn't have to be set a certain way," she said.
She said yoga teachers should be empathetic, attentive to students' needs and abilities, and treat everyone equally. Willingness to learn new techniques and postures is also important, she said.
Blyth and Calhoun-Guitar teach males and females of all ages and fitness levels. Calhoun-Guitar teaches between 10 and 25 students. Blyth teaches between three and 10.
They say they love seeing their students' lives change from yoga.
"(The change) can be small . . . or it can be that they changed their whole lifestyle," Calhoun-Guitar said.
"Maybe they quit smoking. They get through depression. They get over injury and thy get back to work when they've been off work from injury. They may change their diet. I have people who are recovering alcoholics or recovering drug addicts that kick it completely. "
Both teachers pay close attention to their students and will tailor a practice for those having a hard day.
"You try to do it in a subtle way that you're not pointing out that they're struggling," Calhoun-Guitar said.
"Frequently I'll introduce a modification that might be for one person in a room but I don't want to point that out, so I'll maybe get the whole class to try that variation."
Joanna Manning, the New Brunswick representative for Yoga Atlantic, said certified yoga teachers take a minimum of 200 hours of training over nine months.
Manning said teaching yoga is a part-time profession for most teachers in New Brunswick. They teach an average of 10 hours per week. Most teachers have a second job.
Calhoun-Guitar and Blyth hold classes in the early morning, at noon, and in the evenings, each lasting for an hour to an hour and a half. Calhoun-Guitar is a massage therapist in between classes. Blyth cares for her son. Though there's little money in teaching yoga, Calhoun-Guitar and Blyth said they do it because they're passionate about it.
"I'm doing something that I love and I get to share it with people," Blyth said.
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