Monthly Archives: April 2019

Motivation – possibly the most important tool in your toolbox!

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.Eleanor Roosevelt  Motivation is possibly the most important tool in your toolbox. Motivation  drives many minutes of each day. It is motivation that underpins major chunks of enthusiasm, fuels the determination to persevere, and keeps one moving on a forward path professionally, personally and simply in being alive.

What IS motivation? It is many things to many people. Motivation can be defined as that which inspires one to thought or action. It can be a basic need for survival or switch that turns one on to maximum effort, performance or creativity. For some, it is extrinsic, set in action by outside influences. For others it is intrinsic, a life force from deep within. For yet others it is the seed from which inspiration is born, the putting one foot in front of another to keep going, or the explosion of energy, power and one’s being to make a quantum leap. Bottom line? I challenge you to pause for a moment right here and define motivation in your own words for your own use.

Type the word into your search engine and you may come up with something like this: Motivation is “the general desire or willingness of someone to do something.” Pretty basic, huh? Enthusiasm is a word that keeps popping up, also goal and sense of purpose. To broadly consider the word, yes, sure, without purpose why would anyone do anything?

As some of you know, I work a great deal with the word “functional.” Don’t you think that “purposeful” comes in a close second? So, if one is motivated by what might work functionally for one’s unique self, wouldn’t it follow that proceeding with a sense of purpose would carry out what is needed to sustain the motive and/or goal? “One way to keep momentum going is to have constantly greater goals.” —Michael Korda

Recently I have been involved with a corporate group doing its best to prepare for a local 5K race. Many in the group have limited experience in doing so and, not surprisingly, the demands of consistent training have taken a hit in the form of disintegrating motivation. Try as one might to help influence another, it is only by embracing the tasks at hand can one succeed.

This is one of my all time favorite photos, taken in 2010 by my friend Jeb Wallace-Bordeur.

This is the time of year to find a variety of motivational signals bounce off each other. A nice sunny day makes us want to abandon responsibility and rush outdoors. Likewise, a cold and dreary day tempts one to table some of the day’s goal-oriented activities – especially ones that require intensity, creativity or physical and mental effort and endurance.

On a personal note, I found myself slipping from some of the structured practices that I know benefit my day. Early morning journaling and meditation was being lost in a few minutes of extra sleep, at home Yoga practice was giving way to lethargy, outings in the woods with my pup were abandoned. Of course, there is solid reasoning behind this – I need that sleep or the woods are just too wet and messy right now. (Besides, the bears are waking up and they’re hungry!)

The results of these failings began to add up and I noticed a general malaise, a sluggishness that is simply not my general demeanor. So, I went back to my own advice: put one foot in front of the other and just do it. Is it working perfectly? Of course not. But at least I am moving. I have resumed my practice of planning each day to include the necessary time to achieve my goals. Even if my mediation and Yoga practices are short, they need to exist to retrain the HABIT, which will ultimately perpetuate  

Because one of my goals is to be ready to hike when Vermont trails open again the end of May, I need to build strength and endurance now. Much to the delight of my dog, we are leash walking dirt roads a minimum of 3 miles a day, adding ½ mile to our one weekly long walk which should give us at least 10 miles by the time the hikes begin, adding at least one straight up climb each week (useful to live near a ski area that is closed for the season), and, for fun and mental flexibility, daily making sure to have plenty of off-leash ball play and some agility drills for both of us.itself.

Do I love doing this? H— no! Some days I think I spend as much time getting the mud off of both of us as we do in the activity. Some days I come home drenched to the skin. Other days, however, I am so happy and feel so energized that the motivation that got me out there has blossomed into enthusiasm, inspiration and pure joy! And, in June, when I want to hit the heights, will I be glad that I’d prepared a strong foundation? H— yes!

Utilizing motivation as a tool or as fuel is a skill. It is also deeply personal. No one can do it for you. A coach or trainer can stand on the sidelines and cheer, shout, badger, encourage, curse, scream, plead or whatever; but, only you, the individual, can do this.

And without that spark of vitality, excitement or energy, what would life be like other than flat, dull, and perhaps boring. (Heaven forbid!) And then there are dreams. Do you have one or more? I certainly hope so. “The future [does indeed belong] to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” —Eleanor Roosevelt

 Note, I have no idea where the motivation to write this post came from. I had just returned from a Yoga class, it was snowing pretty hard, I sat down to check my email …. ? lf

YTT. WHAT’S ALL THE FUSS ABOUT?

Yoga Teacher Training has found itself in the spotlight and presumably would be happy not to have done so. This, from a client, just arrived in my inbox: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/style/corepower-yoga-teacher-training.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share So, yes, even the NY Times has taken a penetrating look into the training of potential Yoga Instructors. 

If you are one of the growing numbers who roll out their mats in a Yoga studio, you have most likely heard a teacher say “I have my 200 hours.” This means that your teacher has undergone a study of 200 hours (now stretching to 300, 500 and 1,000 hours). When you stop to consider how many thousands of years Yoga has been around, don’t you wonder how much one can learn in 200 hours? Other questions arise such as does one really need a certificate to teach? Is the high cost of training suspicious? If I really enjoy just taking classes, do I really need to become a teacher as well?

DISCLAIMER.

I am NOT an expert on the subject. I completed my 200 hours and am currently pursuing an additional 300 hours through the Summers School of Yin Yoga (https://joshsummers.net/school/). My passion is to study. After a long and successful career as a professional ballet dancer and teacher, I transitioned to the fitness industry first teaching pre and post-natal classes as my family was growing, seguing into group exercise and finally personal training. I have participated and competed in a number of sports and have had the privilege of working with a top level cycling coach, thus learning a great deal more about endurance training, nutrition, the systems of the body, and, of course, performance.

And then came my introduction to Yoga, just 3.5 years ago. Almost immediately thereafter I pursued my initial YTT believing that, though I had little interest in teaching, that would be the best resource for learning as much about Yoga in an intensive fashion as possible. Over a year later I completed my training, but in the meantime had found yet more exciting Yoga training which I jumped into with enthusiasm. Let me say here that I am deeply indebted to all the teachers with whom I have studied. (especially Terry Cochburn, Josh Summers and Sage Rountree,). Clearly my personal experience colors my opinions to follow.

Do we need to know all there is to know about a subject before we can teach it? I sincerely hope not! Were that so, a great number of highly gifted teachers would be side-lined. But we do need to be open, observant, and sensitive to the needs of our students, willing to say “I don’t know, but I’ll find out.” We need to leave our egos at the door and lead a lifetime of continuing study so that we can safely care for our students and never cause physical, mental or emotional harm.

YOGA ALLIANCE

Yoga Alliance is: “…the largest international nonprofit association representing the yoga community. We support the integrity and diversity of yoga teaching.” Many of us are products of training that was sanctioned by YA and many of us are members of YA as well.

 

Be on the alert! Yoga Alliance is taking a hit from many sides. Claims range from profit motivation to encouraging a cookie cutter curriculum that can be damaging in some cases. If you’re interested, you will find it easy to check into.

200 HOURS?

Perhaps if a student enters YTT with a background in exercise science or something similar, 200 hours will provide a good foundation. In my own experience, I began with decades of training and professional practice , but little to no experience with Yoga. Yes, I learned many asanas and how to teach them. My 200 hour teacher was generous in teaching the principles of Ayurveda as well. What I was left with was a growing confidence teaching the physical components of Yoga practice, but in awe of teachers who were able to delve so deeply into the other and more spiritual aspects – you know, all about Patanjali, etc. My own training was very generic as my teacher did not want to label her teaching as one school of Yoga or another. I am grateful to her for that.

FUNCTIONAL ALIGNMENT.

Devising a training plan that will pass the judgment of YA for accreditation may be responsible for so many teachers floating about in the Yoga universe, teaching that there is only one way to execute a pose. One of the blessings of my introduction to and work with Yoga for Athletes and Yin Yoga is the understanding that there is no one way to do something, no one perfect alignment. Just as each of us is (physically, mentally and spiritually) our own uniquely designed individual, so our practice must be functionally appropriate for our personal and particular bodies and minds.

The absolute beauty of working with functional alignment is that practice and teaching are ever new, ever freshly creative and energized.

On a personal level, though I have studied and worked with anatomy and exercise physiology for many years, and learned much of the science behind performance, maintenance, injury including prevention and rehabilitation, it was not until I had the good fortune to participate in a basic cadaver lab through Dartmouth Medical School that I was able to connect the dots. Indeed, to be a personal trainer, athletic coach or Yoga instructor, continuing education is a gift as well as a mandate!

$.

Ah, yes. YTT is very, very expensive. Yeah, there’s the old “you get what you pay for” thing, and yes, of course, a YTT teacher should be compensated appropriately for his or her hours and hours of course development, organizing and teaching what may well become life-altering for students, but has the ideal slipped down that proverbial slope to financial opportunity? If we, the students, expect a great deal from our teachers, yes, then, we, the students, should pay them for what they give us. On the other hand, if the YTT presenter considers the work primarily from the point of view of financial enhancement, perhaps he or she should at least try to refocus.

I sit squarely in the middle of the fence on this one as I respect the professional’s need to be adequately paid for the work done, but not motivated by desire to swell business profits. Expertise, I believe, is worth the cost!

Recently I learned of J Brown who has an extensive website, blog, and podcasts. In 2015 he addressed this issue: https://www.jbrownyoga.com/blog/2015/7/pros-and-cons-of-yoga-teacher-training Then just this month he said in part: ““After twenty years of providing yoga teacher training at premium-priced 200, 300, or 500-hour increments, the yoga profession is beginning to reckon with the unintended consequences of relying so heavily on this deeply flawed economic instrument. …The best way to disrupt a failing system is to create something better.” https://www.jbrownyoga.com/blog/2019/4/reimagining-yoga-teacher-training

YOUR PRACTICE.

What do you think? The practice of Yoga is embraced in as many ways as there are people to embrace it. For some it is all about the asanas and fitness, for others it is most instructive with respect to meditation, Pranayama, or relaxation. To still more, Yoga literally links Yin and Yang. It is about lifestyle, balance, medicine and spirituality just as much as it is about strength and flexibility. As you go to your mat, my recommendation is to make your Yoga your own. Whatever upheavals may rage in the Yoga community (and there are more than just ‘200 hour’ arguments!), leave them, for awhile anyway.

Most of all, I encourage you to choose well before you entrust yourself to the teaching of another. Vet your teachers as diligently as you would interview a new pediatrician. Once you are satisfied that the teacher (or, of course, teachers) you have chosen is/are well qualified in areas that are important to you, try a few classes first to be sure you value that teacher’s personality and potential connection. Once decided, go for it. Learn what you can. Question what you will. Practice. Relish. Enjoy. NAMASTE.