Tearing up the Lesson Plan
I'm a planner. Most days, I create a literal to-do list. Yes, I'm sure there's "an app for that" but these are hand scrawled lists. I'm the first to admit it's a little compulsive. I know myself well enough at this stage to recognize that my lists are part of a daily structure that keeps me in my comfort zone of control, illusory or not. As far as life habits go, it could be a lot worse so I cut myself some slack and (most of the time) don't hide that I keep and follow a tally of my to-do's.
As a yoga instructor, I plan most of my classes. On my mat, and on paper and in a very weird Sanskrit/Englisjh shorthand that looks like gibberish but makes sense to me. Years ago, on a mat alongside me and my trusty list, a student glanced down, did a double take, and asked me what language that was. I'm the only one who needs to understand what I've written, just so long as I can translate well for my students, so I was only mildly embarrassed.
Now, this part is a little embarrassing. I've been teaching with a class plan—mostly though not always— since 1994. For decades, I saved these notebooks, journals, and folded pieces of paper. I had boxes and boxes in the basement. They followed me from Chicago to San Diego to Vermont. Last year, I finally really thought about this. Why am I saving these class plans? On some level, I am thinking well, if it's a really good class, I may want to repeat it. But I have never done so, though I've sometimes tried. The reality is that even if I set out to do so, the class changes. The students, the season, me....and, to be frank, I never actually follow to the letter the class plans I create. So why hang on to these flimsy has-beens of my teaching life? Does it prove to myself that once upon a time I did something worthwhile?
My decision to purge and get rid of every single written class plan came in my own mini version of pandemic inspired reorganization. I was cleaning out a single file cabinet and found a stash. Curious, I began to actually look at them, and simultaneously kind of "think" the class through. And you know what? It might as well have been Greek. Not the shorthand; I know my own shorthand for Suryanamaskar A or Downward Dog but it all just seemed so...random.
At the time a class is planned, it's not at all random. What I plan and teach grows from the broader context not just of what is going on with me, but from knowing the regular students who attend a given class—their capabilities or limitations or level of experience, the season, the state of the world, my own areas of self study, and on and on. These scribblings were just the discarded husks of yoga classes, devoid of the context, the experience, the moment. They meant exactly nothing.
Box by box, notebook by notebook, everything went into the recycling bin. It felt a little sad but mostly liberating to dump the whole dusty lot. And I've found in letting go of that historical record—ultimately devoid of substance—that I feel freer to plan my classes with a looser grip. To recognize that I am likely to change course anyway depending on who actually shows up and what they are capable of or need, as well as to recognize that I am a good enough teacher to trust my training and ability to adapt moment to moment to what is happening and let it flow through me and to you.
To trust that I will be able—to use a much overused pandemic phrase—"to pivot."
Maybe it's the pandemic, maybe it's my own advancing age, maybe it's the sorrows and losses of recent years, but the felt experience of letting go at the end of each class, rolling up my mat, tossing the plan into the recycling bin feels itself like yet another gift that the practice of yoga has given me. The freedom to live fully in the moment, and without excess drama, let that moment go as the next moment comes. And the next, and the next.....
And now, a bit of a (ahem) "pivot".
Friends, this past year has been tougher for the studio than any other year, including the first year of the pandemic. There are no longer Federal or State resources and funds to make up for the lost revenue of our diminished enrollment. The YOGA NOW video on demand site helps supplement the loss as intended, but not enough so. I really, really hope that people start coming back to classes. But in recent weeks I've also begun to make peace with the possibility that it might soon be time for the studio itself to let go and recycle itself into whatever grows in its place. I've been scrappy and fierce for 2 years and pivoted so much I'm dizzy, but the studio needs more than me to keep it going, it needs you.
I'm deeply grateful to those of you who have been regularly showing up for the past 2 years. Your presence, in person or on Zoom, has lifted my spirits daily. We just need more of you!
Please come to class! On Zoom or in person. Bring your friends! Spread the word! We love to teach and are a solid and skilled bunch of teachers who believe strongly in the power of this practice to change lives, tenderize hearts and make the world better. We will keep on rolling along moment to moment, class to class as long as we can, and see what happens. We hope you will do that with us.
With love, Leslie
