What’s New? Today I have to submit midterm grades and it took everything I had to drag myself out of bed this morning because the midterm wall just looms larger every semester. Next week is Spring Break (for the students as our administration repeatedly reminds us) and while this year that does not include a trip to Key West with my family I will lean into rest and paying attention to my breathing so I can make it through the rest of the semester. Hopefully before the week is out I can rediscover my Zest. Here’s hoping everyone can do the same.
Original: I started practicing yoga this summer as part of my self-care routine because this pandemic layered on top of existing trauma has broken me. I hate exercise in general and cannot summon the discipline for it when so many aspects of life at this time are such a struggle. But yoga doesn’t feel that way to me. It is work for my body. I feel it in the tremble of my muscles during and the ache in those same muscles after. I feel it when I can stretch further than I could before. I feel it when I can root myself firmly to the earth when before I could only wobble. I feel it when I raise my arms high and wide and feel power flow from fingertip to toe. Yes, yoga is definitely work for my body but it is also wonderful for my mind as I pay attention to my breath then take care to consider the position of my body in fine detail. Unlock those knees. Relax those hands. Yoga is good for my body but it is also good for my soul as the focus yoga requires frees me from the worry spiral that plagues so much of my day.
But this is not a post about yoga. This is a post about what yoga has taught me about teaching writing. Five years ago I wrote a blog post about the reasons that teachers need to be learners which can be summed up in this way: new learning experiences can give teachers depth as practitioners. I wrote then that we need to learn new things for ourselves to give ourselves regular space to focus on our own needs and wants; for our colleagues to help our entire community to continue learning and growing; and for our students to help us understand the struggles our students face as they learn new things. All of this is true. At the time I wrote that post I had just embarked on Lexington Poetry Month for the first time. My journey as a poet continues to make me a better teacher as writing poetry continues to push me out of my comfort zone as a writer. It has only been this year that I have felt able to say “I am a poet” out loud and to regularly share my poetry. I hope it won’t take me five years before I can say “I am a yogi” but if it does then that is OK too.
My poetry and yoga practice are important to my continuing journey as a teacher of writers. Both have taught me mindfulness and humility – essential qualities to support developing writers. This fall I am teaching writing with the mindfulness of a yogi. I pay attention to my breath when I talk and listen. Purposely slowing down to give us all space to think and be. While I put this attention to breath first, I also focus on balance. I want my students to stretch but yoga has taught me that balance must come first and last. We can push. We can stretch. But we must also stay balanced. Sometimes the stretch can be sacrificed to preserve balance and that is OK. Perhaps the most important thing I have learned from yoga about the teaching of writing is the importance of paying attention to the details while simultaneously not sweating them. Which is something that poetry has taught me as well. I have learned to hold my pen more loosely when I write and when I teach writers. I hope these lessons will become as natural as breathing with practice.
Image by Werner Moser from Pixabay
