Today I did a private class for my friend. It took 1.5 hours of adjustments just
for sun salutation A. Many revelations which will apply to beginners I will teach
in future:
1. Lack of body awareness
– She couldn’t protract her shoulder blades. As much as I said
“push against me”, she went further away. She was also not
able to isolate that part of her shoulders and the rest of her back
came up along with the protraction.
– When the rest of the back came up, so did her tailbone. Once
she tucks that in, THE SHOULDERS RETRACTED SLIGHTLY
(????)
– What I learnt: The part of the body that’s supposed to be
isolated can move elsewhere.
2. Don’t know how to breath (???)
– She forgot to breathe, mixed up inhale and exhale and breathing
in but stomach was falling.
– I was very confused as to what was happening. Breathing is
something that humans think would be most natural and comes
easily. But it isn’t.
– What I learnt: stop the moving and restart this because
breathing is the most fundamental.
3. Strength (or lack of)
– She could not hold her own weight in knee-plank. The trembles
gave my heart trembles. In comparison, I know many men who
can do handstands and pretty much fly but with very bad
postures (basically using full arm and shoulder strength)
– What I learnt: Throw the rest of the sequence out the window
and focus on the arms. Focus on building her strength and core
before moving on to more postures.
4. Habits (most annoying)
– She has the habit of shrugging her shoulders. Which made
shoulder mobility quite hard and doesn’t help that she doesn’t
have arm strength.
– She also has the habit of rounding her back into a forward fold.
– What I learnt: REGRESS REGRESS REGRESS!
It helped that we have been building arm strength the last 3 weeks because I
was able to give slightly more than 10% for her adjustments and able to guide
her into the poses. As this was a one on one session, I was able to give my
full attention and adjustments to her. I can only imagine what it will be like in a
class of 20.
Polly
200 Hour YTT Nov’19
