SCOTT'S YOGA

Seems everywhere you go in acro yoga these days all you hear is hand to hand. Workshops, people talking, jams that seem to contain only hand to hand. I've been doing acro yoga now for 2 and a half years, I've been teaching it for almost a year and I know there is soooooo much more to acro yoga than hand to hand. It almost feels like a status symbol or a prize. "I can do hand to hand for 5 seconds." Said as if it were on a resume. I understand the fascination. It is one of the hardest poses to master. It requires plenty of practice, strength, balance and concentration. Oh and did I mention it gets a lot of attention?


In many cases there is a run before you walk mentality. I know people who have a fairly impressive hand to hand but can't L-base their grandma in bird. When they come to a jam, hand to hand is all they do, all they want to do. They balk at anything else, as if it were beneath them. I appreciate hand to hand and the work involved in it. I even spend a fair bit of my practice ... well practicing it. Having hand to hand as a skill in my toolbox definitely aids movement possibilities in a flow. That being said it isn't my end all be all. When others are loudly playing with hand to hand and moving all over a space with a ton of spotting and people and attention, I'd much rather prefer to be off in the corner working with a flyer on some really rad spins, pops, and holds. Sure occasionally that will include hand to hand but only occasionally and often lying on my back rather than standing on my feet.


It seems to have a lot to do with intention. Acro yoga itself is an interesting discipline. People come to it from very different places. I'm a yogi. I have an active practice and have been teaching for almost 4 years. I approach acro yoga as I do any other yoga, I consider it part of my practice. It isn't about attention or grand standing. For me its about connection and movement with another. That connection to me is the essence of the practice. I had one of my acro yoga students put it quite well the other day, she said "I practice all kinds of yoga and love it, but only in acro can I enter a room and have 2 or 3 hours pass without a single other thought." After all isn't that one of the basic fundamentals of yoga? However, many others come to yoga from elsewhere. From gymnastics, dance, circus arts, dare devil types, extreme sporters, the list goes on. A very different place from a yogi. You can visit almost any jam any where in the world and I suspect very quickly pick the two groups of people apart.


Its a meeting of two worlds, in that sense, around a common goal. After all, acro yoga brings fun and play to people's lives. It also brings show. It is amazing to watch. That show and attention attracts many different people, even addicting many different people, yogis are no exception. Hand to hand then is one of the showiest, especially once you're standing up. Its way up in the air, can be seen from a long distance and grabs attention like no other poses do. People begin to crave it, that intangible success, and given the large amount of practice and effort involved its no wonder it becomes an obsession for some. Yet when I see it being practiced, it tends to be all I see. I don't see it moving to something else. I don't see it coming from something else. I don't see artistry, I don't see fluidity, I don't see peace. Its being done for the express purpose of show. Hand to hand and that is all. Rarely even do i see it being done in a beautiful way. Its usually rushed, usually wobbly, kinda scary, always loud, and a video camera is almost always involved.


For me I've seen acro yoga change. Or rather the emphasis of it change as it becomes more and more mainstream and popular. I see a move away from the yoga that gave birth to it, moving ever further towards acrobatics. I see it all as a fine line. I like to think within acro yoga you can move in and out of both worlds effortlessly. That is part of the beauty of yoga, it can be anything you need it to be. It isn't defined by the details its defined as a path to a result. A result you set and work towards. So yoga can be acrobatics, it can be dance, it can be mountain climbing or drag racing. Its for those of us who like our acro yoga with a little less hand to hand, that have trouble finding places to do and learn other things. At a recent divine play, the quintessential acro yoga festival, I took the dutch acro intensive. My community was exploring and playing with standing holds and hand to hand and I thought rather than just jumping in head first it'd be a good idea to learn the skills. I found the class very challenging. I also found it difficult to find partners. I was scoffed at for my hand to hand skills, and made to feel extremely uncomfortable. However I stayed and was lucky enough to find some great people who let me practice with them and learn. I was grateful for the opportunity and what I took back to my community was invaluable.  The way I was treated on the other hand by some of the students was not acceptable. It was just the next day that I was in an advanced L-base class, I saw some of those very same people who had scoffed at me struggling immensely in standing acrobatics, struggling on the floor with L-basing. I offered to help but was received with yet more scoff as they left. L-base was for losers is what I imagined they were saying as they grumbled off. L-basing simply doesn't hold the same attention and fascination as standing acrobatics do for many people.


It was at once an enlightening and a growing experience but on the other side of it I saw some of the ugly. Its a view of different worlds colliding. No practice is ever going to be perfect. I love acro yoga, and it is a huge and hopefully life long part of my practice. I accept all the people it attracts and smiles it creates, from all walks of life, from doing to watching. It creates community and play like no other activity I've ever done. But can we ... maybe just for today ... do a little less hand to hand? Please!

I was recently asked by a student, after a yoga class, if I had a favorite. I think she was fishing for a specific answer but it brought up a much deeper point for me. I told her that I think its natural for people to have favorites. Its part of our make up and who we are. We look for close connections in our lives and some people will fill those spots better than others, its natural. However I think there is a line between having favorites and playing favorites.

You need only look to the sutras and to the Yamas to see the importance of the teacher-student relationship. Its a fundamental relationship to yoga and one I think needs to be respected. We've all been in classes where its obvious who the teacher's pet is. We've also all heard of or maybe witnessed cases where that relationship has been taken advantage of by either a teacher or a student. Its a slippery slope from one to the other. I do my best to not play favorites in class. Although I know very well in my mind I do have students, in each of my classes, that are my favorites. Students that i connect with, and with which I have a closer bond. That relationship brings positive effects to both teacher and student. I am able to see someone truly light up from my teaching, see someone progress and grow. As a student they feel a trust and safety in my class and they feel free to open and grow. When its all working right its a beautiful thing.

As with any relationship though, there needs to be boundaries. If it wasn't important it wouldn't be so prominent in the sutras and other yoga texts, not to mention the tabloids and the news. As a teacher I see and feel that importance. I feel it's my responsibility to respect and maintain that relationship. It can be a very intense experience for both people but it is the teacher who should hold yoga in a different place and guide the relationship by example just as we lead a class. It is part of our practice, part or our teaching. The class doesn't end when we leave the studio. It reminds me of my days as a lifeguard. When I started as a lifeguard I wasn't a fully certified lifeguard in the eyes of the law, I was what you would call a life saver. It's common practice to employ life saver's as lifeguards, it simply means they haven't completed their national lifeguard certification. While I was on duty as a lifeguard I had a duty to do everything i could to save people. However, when I left the facility I was just a life saver. Which meant I had the skills to save people but it was my choice to save people or not, my safety came first. Once I completed my lifeguard certification things changed. In completing certification I made a promise that as a lifeguard, no matter where I was I had an obligation to save someone. Of course there are always extreme limits to that but in general that was the way it worked. As yoga teachers I feel we make a similar promise to our students. Being yogic in the classroom and something else entirely as you step outside is not an option.

I tend to think of myself as a guide rather than a teacher. I guide my students by showing them my practice. If my practice resonates with them, they continue to take my class. But my practice doesn't end when I walk out of the studio. My life is my practice and my life in turn serves as a guide for my students. I don't feel I need to make special exception to show my students a specific side of me or vision of me. Instead I show them me. If "me" isn't something I want my students to see then perhaps I need to work harder on my own practice. Of course that doesn't mean you can't have privacy, it simply means you don't have to put on a show.

I never did give my student the answer she wanted. Of course other students were there and over heard. Everyone had opinions and a fun time guessing and debating about who my favorite might be. I most definitely have favorites, I am a person after all. They change over time as do my students, my teaching and my classes. I honor and respect those amazing relationships. Yoga for me extends beyond self to the personal community you build and grow within. I took pride in knowing she felt it important to ask and also that she couldn't be sure of an answer. It meant I was doing a good job of being a teacher and hopefully my response in turn serves us both well.