Rebuild/Renew: Teacher Training with David Swenson and Shelley Washington

In July of 2011 I went to Burlington, Vermont for a week of teacher training with David Swenson and Shelley Washington. During that week, our class was taught the physical adjustments for every pose in the primary series of Ashtanga yoga, as well as timing and breath counts. I was fortunate to go with my teacher, Sue Pentland from New England Yoga. We worked together the last two days, teaching and assisting each other while getting help and advice from David and Shelley. I was already familiar with David Swenson’s down to earth expertise and humor from a prior workshop. His wife and partner Shelley Washington was a welcome surprise, bringing a dancer’s view of the practice and often providing insights into how one pose prepares the body for another.

The mysore classes at YogaVermont were enlightening as well, and if you’re ever in Burlington, do try to get a class with Kathy McNames or Scott York. Kathy’s assists were deep and thoughtful, and her advice to me will resonate for a long time. She watched me trying to get my feet at hip width for a dropback, and she told me that when you’re washing dishes, you just wash the dishes. You don’t have to keep trying really hard to get the dishes cleaner. David Swenson gave related advice, that I also failed to truly hear in time. He said that ashtanga yoga is a tool, like a knife. You can use it as a tool, or you can use it as a weapon. Through no fault of theirs, I over-practiced, doing mysore classes at YogaVermont everyday, which I should have foregone by the end of the week as our training involved more and more practice. I wanted to learn a bit of 2nd series, so I went to a thursday night mixed primary/2nd series class, which felt great and probably would have been fine if I didn't also go to mysore class on friday morning, followed by a day of teaching, assisting, and practicing about 2/3 of primary series. By Saturday my left knee, already predisposed to delicacy from running on pavement with my dog this summer, was no longer interested in lotus. I got through the weekend okay, breathing and modifying as necesssary, but when I got home everything tightened up. I took a break from practicing (and oh how I hate that), but now that I'm back, recovery is slow. It's like I'm new. In many ways I am new, I am renewed, my entire chauturanga/vinyasa has been analyzed and improved, and I have to solidify and reinforce new habits of breath and movement. But when even janu sirsasana makes my knee squeal, it's hard to maintain the internal focus to breathe through a seated sequence with so many modifications.

The goal now is to take it slow and rebuild from the ground up. Acknowledge that my own ego/stubbornness has brought me to this place, and thoroughly learn this lesson. Also acknowledge the gift, this must be what most people feel like when they come to this practice, this ashtanga practice, for the first time or the first year or longer. In the long run, this will make me a better teacher. Inhale head up, exhale fold. It's really quite simple. Just wash the dishes, they are clean enough.