Hello All and Happy New Year! My deepest apologies for the extended interlude between posts recently. A lot has happened in the last few weeks. For starters I relocated to a new city. I'll now spew my thoughts and experiences on anything and everything related to the movement arts from the heady metropolis we all know and love: San Francisco. Now that I'm settled I can say that I’ve never seen a more eclectic population so densely packed into a single metro area. People are nice here! Unlike Los Angeles, people actually make eye contact with you on the street and some even go so far as saying "hello!" The vibe is charming and inviting. Needless to say, the yoga scene here is off the hook! I went to my first yoga class at Yoga Tree yesterday. I was excited to practice in my new city. I randomly selected a mixed-level vinyasa class that worked with my schedule and arrived just in the nick of time. AHHHHHHH the ambiance of revered space! This sacred space creates a safe and nurturing environment spanning across the board to 99.9% of yoga studios. This sacred space is what determines my bias towards a community practice in a studio versus a home practice.

Unlike other endeavors, I always make the effort when entering a new yoga studio to enter without any preconceived ideas or great expectations about how the class and/or instructor should be. However, yesterday's class left me somewhat disappointed. I've heard great things about Yoga Tree and assumed that the instructors there would be knowledgeable and detail oriented. Considering that this was an all-level class, there were definitely newbies there. Instead of thoroughly walking through all the postured and sequences the instructor simply called out the names (mostly in English instead of Sandskrit) of the poses as if it was yoga aerobics. There was no demonstration, no real useful insights, corrections or adjustments on alignment and very little emphasis on the breath. As a seasoned yoga practitioner I had to pick up the pace of my practice as if I were in the yoga Olympics in order to keep up! I could only imagine how the less experienced yogis must've fared. I tried to dismiss my brain's attempt to critically analyze the instructor as I moved through my surya namaskars at warp speed but couldn't help but wonder, "How is this instructor teaching at a respectable studio like Yoga Tree?" Teaching is a responsibility, especially when it comes to teaching less experienced students.

This brings me to my main and final point. In a city like San Francisco where people embrace and empower one another in all their endeavors, is it possible to "over-embrace?" In other words, yoga in and of itself is a modality that accepts all who come to it, but this overly inviting attitude could be problematic when it comes to teaching. The pervasive sentiment of "everyone can do it, therefore anyone can teach it" contributes to the increasing mediocrity amongst yoga instructors. This is something I also noticed in Los Angeles. At the risk of sounding arrogant, what I don't understand is how someone with a rather pedestrian background can come into a well respected yoga establishment and teach mainly because they completed a teacher training at this establishment versus someone with vast experience in ballet, gymnastics, martial arts etc... (such as myself ). I'm not saying that all those who come from a pedestrian background lack the capacity to become incredible teachers, but I've seen this trend over and over again and I thought it's time to bring some, shall we say...."awareness" to the matter. Later today, I'm off to try another class at Yoga Tree with an instructor who came highly recommended by my mentor and let's just say that this time, I choose not to leave my expectations outside the yoga studio door.