Muses from Teaching: Kindness and Compassion
Amy here, dropping in here to share a heartfelt love letter to you, our beautiful Nectar Community and some recent thoughts, feelings, and musings from teaching yoga in the studio this past week.
If you’ve ever been to Janet or my classes, you know we love a theme. As students, I believe it helps build a deeper, heartfelt layer to the practice. And as a teacher, it provides purpose, clarity, and guidance (especially when leading).
I’ve been thinking a lot about holding space in class. How do we hold space when life feels so uncertain and delicate? A word that I literally couldn't get out of my head was compassion and feeling like I wanted to spread kindness around like confetti. I’ve been theming my practices around compassion the past week, offering a soft landing, remembering to come back to the heart, creating space to pause, and space for freedom and movement. With lots of yummy heart and shoulder opening, I’ve been reminding students to lead with kindness. We’ve been working with Anahata, the heart chakra, and incorporating gentle breathwork to help regulate the nervous system. Inviting kindness back to our bodies, knowing it’s okay to find solitude in rest, to recharge our batteries, while also encouraging students to step outside of their comfort zones and connect with their inner strength.
Through this inner landscape, showing up to “do the work” on our mats can create stability, safety and ritual. Some days, it’s simply space to not look at your phone for an hour, tuning out to tune in. Our practice can be our greatest teacher. How we show up for ourselves has a ripple effect on how we show up for others, for the outer world, and for who we are when we step off our yoga mats.
I’ll leave you with some gentle enquiries. If you’ve been to my classes, you know I love offering space to ask questions, to seek the right answers, for you.
Where can you lead with kindness toward yourself?
And where can you extend a small act of compassion to a loved one?
Be kind to yourself.
With love,
Amy