Morning Yoga: A Teacher’s Perspective
Monday through Friday, braving the cold and morning frosts, a larger-than-expected group of tired-eyed morning yogis stumbles through my classroom door. It is 6 in the morning. It’s time for bad balance, stiff muscles, and all the unenviable joy of practicing yoga asanas in the morning.
Over the past few months I have come to realize that morning students are a different breed. Sort of like the night shift crowd at 7 am ready to go home and sleep just as the rest of us start working. There is a certain amount of tired vertigo permeating the air and often semi-verbal meditation, “What was I thinking?”
The morning class is full of people running to their own clock. It’s 5:45 am when they start walking through the door. Many of them get up at 4:30 just to be on time. With the pillow lines still puckering their cheeks and many still in their pajamas (literally), we tripped over our mats and hoped that somehow today’s balance is better than yesterday. Oh, and don’t forget, when you’re done you still have eight hours of your real job ahead of you.
This is a group that oozes dedication and maybe a little bit of insanity. Usually not the soccer mom or the retirees (they come to my 9 am class); These are a breed that should be at work by nine and expect to sleep before eleven. I write this from Columbus, Ohio, where yesterday’s high temperature just barely broke freezing. The sun doesn’t come up until 7:30 and it goes long before most leave the office. It’s a climate that says, “You should learn to hibernate like a bear.”
Yet somehow, this morning crew seems to have made strides in yoga and camaraderie that seems almost unimaginable once the sun has risen. I don’t mean simply that they have become more flexible (which they certainly have, as demonstrated by two students who touched their foreheads with their toes for the first time last week). This group seems to see the bigger picture of yoga. Perhaps your struggles will help you see the truth of yoga. I guess I mean they see that yoga is something much bigger than what you do in a yoga class … it’s much bigger than what you do on your yoga mat.
This humble morning crowd has a bond. Within days of our first class, the group of headers had created a motley group of brothers and sisters. Some younger, some older, all struggling to find a semblance of balance on one leg that at any other time of the day would seem too simple to argue. When a new student drowsy walks through the classroom door, regulars immediately say good morning and give him some words of encouragement. Class begins and for ninety minutes perseverance, discipline, and a will to survive take over (along with the normal comedy that comes with trying to stretch at 6am).
We end with the traditional minutes of calm and tranquility. A short shavasana to recover, recover and relax; a short interlude before the normal day begins. But this is where the real difference from the morning yogi lies.
While most people come to class to de-stress, that is, to recover from all the stress of the day. The morning crew sees practice from another perspective.
Various traditional definitions of yoga can be summed up as “stabilizing the mind” … and this is exactly how this group treats it. For them, yoga is not stress reliever, it is stress prevention, maybe even stress elimination. Early morning struggles and early classes travel with them throughout the day. For them, yoga is not stretching, or resting, or relaxing. It is a practice for the coming day-to-day rigors of life.
Get up when you still want to sleep. Face the cold when your house is still warm. Drive to class while others enjoy their coffee. Pull, push, turn, breathe, sweat. Now, do all of this and end with a smile on your face and a sense of calm in your heart. Something about this morning practice seems to have a different effect. All the morning fights seem to make the rest of the day so much easier.
The early morning class is not for everyone, but for the 10-20 morning yogis who will meet me before the sun rises tomorrow, thank you for always reminding me what real yoga is all about.