Posted by Lisa Rosenthal on Thu, Aug 12, 2010 @ 07:23 AM
Sometimes I write my blogs late at night. Very late at night. So late, that really it’s early morning. When the house is quiet and still. The sounds outside are muted and sleepy except for the nocturnal creatures.
Sometimes that’s when I find the peace of mind to write my blog. It is very late right now, quiet.
This morning (yesterday morning), I taught a private yoga class to a good friend of mine. Someone I know for a long time, very well, although not always intimately. I know her intimately enough to know about her family, her health, her personality. I have gotten to know her yoga practice most of all, through about two years of practicing together.
She is beautiful and graceful but doesn’t believe it or necessarily know it.
We experiment and learn together even though I am the teacher. She allows that vulnerability and I feel comfortable sharing it with her.
Sometimes I learn that I have been teaching something incorrectly. I believe that I have not caused her pain, although, perhaps occasionally, I have. She knows that I read, research, take classes, take workshops to learn to teach and grow more as a teacher.
I truly believe in the piece of the Hippocratic Oath that reads, (not exactly) first, do no harm.
In a class that I took the other day, a teacher I love almost to the point of idolization, pushed my legs, feet, arms and back into positions that I never would have been able to take by myself. Intense sensation is one way to describe it. Someone with a lower pain threshold might have called it by another name.
That is not who I am as a teacher. My teaching is suggestive, directive; I invite the student into the process. I call upon the students’ innate body wisdom and intuition. I assume that the student knows more about themselves, body, mind, heart and breath than even they realize.
I teach to bring that knowledge floating up to the surface for them to grasp. In their own time and space.
First, do no harm.
Perhaps the perfect phrase for us to sink into as we journey on this path to fertility. First, do no harm. No harm to oneself, first, no harm to others either.
Let the point of this blog be non-harming. And let that non-harming start with yourself. Let the idea of it extend to any negative sound bytes or recordings that you have running through your head. Flood your brain, mind, heart and breath with beautiful, joyous, uplifting messages today. Let them wash away all the thoughts of what you can’t do, what you don’t do, what you didn’t do. Let the breath carry you to realize how extraordinary you are. Just as you are. Absolutely perfect.
To all my students who allow me to learn with you, experience the wonder of the breath and heart, thank you. Special thanks to this one particular student and friend who has encouraged my teaching to blossom with the strength of her trust.