Once upon a time, I was a yogi.
This won't come as a suprise for those who've known me here forever. Since being on chain, I've even done my yoga teacher training. I was obsessed for a while with hot Bikram yoga, sweating it out in a furnace. When I was a teenager I started with Iyengar. During COVID I relied upon my home practice of vinyasa and yin to stay sane.
Breath, of course, was central. Even when I stopped doing the physical practice, pranayama was my go to to calm down, and to strengthen my lung capacity and to strengthen them. Breath is life.
But the shut down of so many studios over COVID - and we were very spoilt for choice here - meant that I just stopped practicing so frequently. There was something about going to a teacher led class that gave me some accountability, but there was also the loveliness of sharing breath with others. There was indeed a sense of oneness. I miss that terribly.
I've been meaning to get back to a class - most classes these days are in gyms and clubs these days - but haven't found one locally that appealed to me. They were too early, too late, or the 'wrong' type of practice. I don't think my body could cope with hardcore fast vinyasa or ashtanga, for example. The older you get, the more your body needs a slower practice.
I also make the excuse that I'm fussy with teachers. It's hard to find one that's well practice and knowledgeable enough so I don't walk out of class in disgust. A young yoga teacher just out of school with not many years under her belt is a gym teacher at best. Yep, my judgemental mind is definitely not tamed.
This week, however, I braved a class in the town we're moving to. There were two reasons I chose it - one, she's an older woman with years of teaching ashtanga and hatha under her belt, and two, it was at 5.15 pm, and a hatha/yin class where beginners were welcome. I booked it before I could think about it too much.
Because there was another reason that was niggling at me - the older I get, the more I need to continue yoga. My fascia needs to stay lubricated. My flexibility and strength needs to be maintained. And there's nothing better than a yoga practice to calm anxiety.
The class was at a resort only ten minutes walk from the new place, which I find amazing - there's nothing like that in the rural town we've been living for the last sixteen years.
But though I was hopeful, I came out discontent.
The problem with yoga teachers is there's no real way of knowing the quality of the teacher. How long have they been practicing for? Who did they train under? And what exactly do they know about yoga?
Turns out she didn't know much at all.
If she'd asked me for feedback, I wouldn't have known where to start.
But damn, I had a long list. 
Banging soundtrack, from start to finish. You don't need banging tunes during the warm up meditation and floor exercises, and certainly not in the 'yin' section of the class (more on this later).
No telling us where we were headed. You need to call the pose so that more experienced yoga students can move into it without looking at the teacher in confusion. Eg 'right foot steps forward into Warrior 1, Virabhadrasana I' - sanskrit optional, of course.
If it's a beginners class and advertised as such, is Warrior 3 the best one to put in a sequence? It sets beginners up for failure.
Always provide options. If you've set up blocks, tell people how to use them. For example, in Warrior 3 it's enough to rest the hands on the blocks and then try balancing if you feel comfortable.
Don't confuse us by saying 'your body, your yoga' and then tell us our arms 'should' be straight in wide legged child pose. The aim of the pose is to extend the spine - if your elbows are slightly bent because of your anatomy or capability, that's fine. There is no 'should' with yoga poses. Everyone has different anatomy.
If you're going to tell us what part or function of the body you're focussing on, tell us at the start of the class so we focus on that too, not at the end.
If you're going to do 'yin' yoga, realise that just because it's a floor pose, does not mean it's yin. The last 20 minutes of the class was advertised as yin but she didn't bother telling us alternatives (for example, pigeon pose has a similiar effect on the muscle if done on the back) nor did she tell us what the aim of the pose was. Doing anahata/puppypose is also a really hard pose for beginners to do and to hold for 3 minutes is painful. She also didn't say to do it at 70 to 80 percent of capacity - with yin, it's not about stretching or strenthening the muscle at 100 percent effort, but addressing the fascia, as well as calming the mind. Doing it after a 'yang' class is also a little dangerous - the muscles are warmed up and you're more likely to overstretch. It's actually debatable whether it should be a thing.
If you're going to advertise the fact you'll concentrate on the breath, do so. There was plenty of opportunity in the class to direct us to this - particularly in the yin poses.
And for god's sake, if you're going to do gongs in savasana, let us know before hand, because if I'd known that bloody racket would be going on with absolutely no warning, and no explanation for how to focus on the sound, I wouldn't have come to this class.
Now, I am in the utterly unfortunate situation of having practiced yoga in it's various forms for over 35 years, and I've got around 700 hours of teacher training up my belt, so I'm not the kind of person you want in your yoga class. Don't worry, I didn't tell her, and I smiled and said 'namaha' to her namaste. I do realise that I have a lot of chitter chatter going on in my head that isn't really yogic, but it does really bug me that inexperienced teachers are in charge of teaching people yoga.
I know you have to start somewhere, but there should be more expert training and assessment than a mere 200 hours before teachers are let loose on people. The rise of cheap yoga training really has let to a dilute form of yoga in the west, and I really wish there was more accountability.
I won't be going back to her class, which is a shame.
Jamie said I should teach local yoga, but I'd actually be too worried about having an uber judgey twat in the class like me.
With Love,
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