Faster.
Why?
Because if you have a yoga teacher that talks fast the poses don’t last super long and you don’t have to spend the whole class just trying to survive. With a teacher that delivers the dialogue at a good pace, without disturbing the rhythm, you can concentrate on really doing each pose to the best of your ability. If you have a yoga teacher who speaks slowly and keeps interrupting the dialogue to talk or correct people you fall out of the pose, lose concentration, waste energy getting back in, and holding the poses so long that the rest of the practice is sabotaged.
Faster is better.
Last night I had a new teacher and she was fantastic. I never ever had such a great class. In rabbit my head almost touched my knees and in head to knee forward bend for the first time I understood how to get my heel up off the floor. For almost three years I could never figure out how to put my head on my knee and still have my heel off the floor. Last night I still had so much energy left I actually could concentrate on that pose. With a slower paced teacher who holds the poses a lot longer, by the time I get to that pose I put my head on my knee and die. (It’s the second to the last pose.) I usually don’t even have any brain energy left for figuring out poses by then.
The teacher last night paced the class perfectly (for me anyway) and kept to the dialogue and it truly was a moving meditation. She also kept the room at a perfect temperature. Another words, her teaching didn’t take everything I had, plus more, and send me home a wobbly numb-brained walking zombi.
Now being a teacher for 30 years I know that delivery is a personal thing. How fast you deliver the dialogue really depends on your persona. I know if I were a Bikram teacher I would be fast, too, because it’s just the way I talk and do things. Slower teachers have a different persona. Slower teachers’ classes are like the intermediate class and faster paced teachers are for beginners like me. More advanced practitioners like to hold the poses longer and have it hotter in the room. Me? Even after almost three years, a faster paced class is so much more beneficial to me. When I’m asked to work beyond my ability, I lose concentration and control and just succumb to a pile of hot mess on a mat doing what appears to look like Bikram yoga, but is in reality me trying to get to the end of class without sitting out for too many poses. Like “rah rah rah rah – which means – I wish I was human again.”
Last night I didn’t even think of sitting out. After every pose I was on my feet and couldn’t wait to get to the next one. It felt so good to work on all the things I hear others talking about, but never have the energy or enthusiasm to try beyond the standing series.
And so, as another day goes by, faster is better, teacher Laura is my new best friend, and …I have written.
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