Tag Archives: Stephanie

Learning something from my daughter

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Photo: Stephanie Smith

My daugh­ter, the yoga teacher

I had a spe­cial plea­sure today in my hatha yoga class at Thrive Yoga: the class was led by  my daugh­ter, Stephanie. We’ve been going to classes together since 2004, and she went through teacher train­ing in 2006-​​2007 at Flow Yoga and then took addi­tional train­ing at Thrive this past year. She’s been teach­ing com­mu­nity and kids classes and sub­bing at Thrive. She’s been bug­ging me for months (or a year) to take one of her classes, but her teach­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties and my sched­ule always seemed out of sync. Finally, she filled in on a Sun­day morning.

I think that the biggest com­pli­ment I could give her was that after the first five min­utes, I for­got that she was my daugh­ter, and just cursed under my breath that she was kick­ing my butt in high lunge and War­rior II. It was still a hatha classes, strong on fun­da­men­tals and focused on breath­ing and body aware­ness, but it kept up a good flow so that I felt touched in my whole body at the end. It cer­tainly was a test for my ego, allow­ing myself to be guided by my daugh­ter through a yoga rou­tine and hold­ing back from tak­ing a pic­ture of her in the class.

Stephanie’s been teach­ing a lot over the past week or so because there have been a lot of class open­ings. Susan and Dave Bowen, the Thrive Yoga own­ers, led a group on a retreat in Hawaii (and tak­ing some leisure time while they’re out there). Hope­fully, there will be many other oppor­tu­ni­ties for Est­eff (as she prefers to be called — it’s a long story).

It’s happening again

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Three days straight with­out going to a yoga class when I had promised myself that I would not allow myself to back out of prac­tice. At least, I got one evening of prac­tice in at home. There’s a small win­dow of oppor­tu­nity at Thrive Yoga in the evening. I get off work between 5:30 and 6:30, and need a full hour to get home. Classes start at 7:15 or 7:30 so I have to make a point of leav­ing closer to 5:30 than 6:00. I then can’t have any delays on the Metro, and my wife has to pick me up on time. Oth­er­wise, I can’t change my clothes and drive to the stu­dio in time for class.

Of course, I could always back my kit and go straight to the stu­dio from the sta­tion. I would have to decide that in the morn­ing, and carry my stuff with me.

I have not been back to Flow Yoga Cen­ter since my knee injury. That’s used to be a lock each Tues­day or Wednes­day. My daugh­ter, Stephanie, and I have fallen out of the habit of tak­ing classes together. She has gone back to col­lege at the Uni­ver­sity of Mary­land to fin­ish off the last 16 cred­its for her BA and that ties up her evenings. Back in the old days, I would walk over to Flow in 30 min­utes and start class at 6:30. Fewer chances of hap­pen­stance imped­ing my prac­tice. I do miss my expo­sure to a dif­fer­ent class of yogi/​yogini, and the smil­ing face of Debra Perlson-​​Mishalove, who was recently blessed with a baby. The absence of a down­town prac­tice also means that I don’t shell out money of classes in a time of tight­en­ing budgets.

Another yoga teacher gets her start

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Photo - Stephanie SmithMy daugh­ter, Stephanie, has been awarded her 200-​​hour yoga teacher cre­den­tial by the Flow Yoga Cen­ter teacher train­ing pro­gram. It’s taken her a while, in part because she is so con­sci­en­tious about ful­fill­ing all the oblig­a­tions and mas­ter­ing the mate­r­ial. She took it very seri­ously. For about six months, she has been vol­un­teer­ing yoga classes at one of the House of Ruth‘s shel­ters for bat­tered women. Now she’s going to be look­ing for more teach­ing opportunities.

Great going, Estef!!!

Who says Sanskrit is a dead language?

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San­skrit is a lan­guage that was not taught in my high school. Its vocab­u­lary has not slipped into the street chat that is the beach­head for any new lex­i­con, although the increas­ing pop­u­lar­ity of yoga may change that in the future. But in the mean­time, any­one want­ing to know how pro­nounce their favorite pose can turn to the Online San­skrit Pro­nun­ci­a­tion Guide. This ser­vice is pro­vided by Tilak Pyle, and I see my daugh­ter Stephanie using it all the time for her teacher train­ing stud­ies at Flow Yoga. This is not a tuto­r­ial for learn­ing San­skrit, but is does take some of the mys­tery out of the nomenclature.

Teacher training

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My daugh­ter, Stephanie, has signed up for teacher train­ing at Flow Yoga this fall. She starts classes in Sep­tem­ber, but is already read­ing the assigned lit­er­a­ture. She is really excited about the oppor­tu­nity to dive deep into yoga. It will rep­re­sent a big invest­ment, $2,700. It will be 200 hours of hard work over six months. It takes a lot of courage and dis­ci­pline to head in this direc­tion. Just think, in Decem­ber 2004, I was drag­ging her to her first yoga classes.

Her full-​​time job is with the Team­sters, in their orga­niz­ing depart­ment, but it’s hard to tell at this stage whether it’s a long-​​term career. She has found a real home for her prac­tice at Flow Yoga. Over the past six months, she has been on a “work for classes” arrange­ment with Debra, the owner, help­ing at the front desk and doing other tasks. She says that she really enjoys work­ing with the staff, teach­ers and cus­tomers drawn to Flow.

She recently had mononu­cle­o­sis and has yet to regain all her strength. She is a begin­ner who has not mas­tered all the poses so she will have to grow in a lot of dif­fer­ent direc­tions at the same time. She would prob­a­bly admit that yoga has played a big part in get­ting her to eat health­ier and stronger. Once she fin­ishes, she’d like to start teach­ing on a part-​​time basis. She became a veg­e­tar­ian awhile ago.

What a parent should teach his kid

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Before my class at the Flow Yoga Cen­ter last week, I paid for my daughter’s pass, buy­ing her a five-​​class one so that we can share a weekly encounter of sweat, deep breaths and bliss in the final savasana. As the owner was swip­ing my credit card through the reader, she said, “I wish we had more fathers like you!” I joked that it was my way of brib­ing Stephanie to give me some time. We go out after­ward and have a bite to eat or sip on a smoothie and talk about the prac­tice, her career plans or her parakeets.

But seri­ously, giv­ing yoga (or med­i­ta­tion) to your child is one of the smartest invest­ments that you can imag­ine. I regret that I waited until she is 28 to give her yoga classes — I wish I had got­ten started 10 years ago, or when I was 28 or what­ever. Yoga should be like send­ing your kids to sum­mer camp (so they can learn social skills), mak­ing them take swim­ming classes (so they don’t drown), pay­ing for dri­ving lessons (so they don’t smash the fam­ily car and kill them­selves). And let’s not get started about the thou­sands of dol­lars into col­lege edu­ca­tion that almost any par­ent will­ingly undertakes.

When we approach yoga seri­ously and with rev­er­ence and awe, we acquire skills that allow us to deal with our bod­ies and our emo­tions. I call it a user’s man­ual for the mind-​​body con­nec­tion. I don’t care if Stephanie will ever man­age to do Bhairavasana, but I do want her to find the still­ness that comes from qui­et­ing our tense mus­cles and men­tal ticks. Yoga teaches you how to be an adult liv­ing in bal­ance. I wish I had known about it when I was on that steep learn­ing curve that starts as a teenager and never seems to level off.

I know that you can only put your kids in a posi­tion to achieve ful­fill­ment, but you can never make them actu­ally do them (horse/​water/​drink – a hard les­son my wife refuses to learn). The frus­tra­tions of par­ent­hood abound. I have given up all expec­ta­tions about where my kids are going to end up — I only hope that they are happy on the way to achiev­ing it.

But I will pull the last dol­lar out of my wal­let if they ask to go to yoga class with me.

¡No te aproveches, Stephanie!

This post was orig­i­nally a con­tri­bu­tion to my Open Mind Open Body online forum.

Daughter walks in my shoes

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My daugh­ter, Stephanie, has her own, brand spank­ing new blog, Medi­a­Chola — which means half­breed in Peru­vian Span­ish (By the way, my son calls him­self Semi­cau­casian, so they’re both think­ing in the same mode.). Right now she’s mostly out­raged at the Bush inau­gu­ra­tion plans as an arro­gant waste of money.

Daughter and yoga

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This Mon­day evening, I went to my class with Stephanie. She had never done any for­mal yoga before, which sur­prised me because I thought she would have run into it at col­lege or in her dance stud­ies. She has taken the Art of Liv­ing intro course so it all can’t be that for­eign to her. A Yoga 1 class is a lot to throw at a begin­ner because there’s a lot to keep track of. We both sweated up a storm because the room was packed and we were get­ting into a really dynamic flow.

After­wards, we had a light din­ner together, a veg­gie sand­wich for her and a salad for me. We talked about the class and our plans for the hol­i­days. Some qual­ity father-​​daughter time together. She says that she wants to do it again. We’ll see if her enthu­si­asm continues.

Crash Course – Art of Living

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My daugh­ter, Stephanie, started tak­ing the intro­duc­tory course to Art of Liv­ing, inspired by the work of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. I encour­aged her to take it because I thought it would be a good tran­si­tion between col­lege and real life — a time to think, share ideas with inter­est­ing peo­ple and get some new skills. It costs more than just the equiv­a­lent of a yoga class — about $250 full fare or $125 for stu­dents — but I felt that it was well worth the money.

I took my intro course two months ago and it was a pow­er­ful expe­ri­ence. It stretches over six days, four week­days and a week­end. The week­day classes were about three hours long, while the week­end classes five hours each. In a way, it’s a bit like a cross between a work­shop and a retreat. It takes you out of your rou­tine and molds your activ­i­ties around the learn­ing experience.

I took it with a small group, just five peo­ple, while Stephanie has about 20 in her course. Some­times, they give the course to 100 or more peo­ple. In India, the course is giv­ing in mas­sive gath­er­ings — it has to be that way in a coun­try of bil­lions. The core of the AOL prac­tice is the Sudar­shan Kriya, a purifi­ca­tion process. A longer form is done reg­u­larly in a group (60 min­utes) while a short­ened form (20-​​30 min­utes) is done daily. A sum­mary of its ben­e­fits can be found on Lifepositive.com.

You are not sup­posed to revel what goes on in the classes, but I have found sev­eral web­sites that details what hap­pens. The best sum­mary is Bharani’s Rev­e­la­tions.

You can read a long por­trait of Sri Sri, Emperor of Air, in Yoga Jour­nal. The DC Chap­ter will be wel­com­ing Sri Sri next week, May 6. Details are on the site. If I have one reser­va­tion about AOL, it’s the rev­er­ence and adu­la­tion with which Sri Sri is held by many of his fol­low­ers. He is def­i­nitely charis­matic in a quirky, Hindu way. One thing is sure — the Art of Liv­ing Foun­da­tion is a huge inter­na­tional orga­ni­za­tion, sus­tain­ing oper­a­tions in over 100 coun­tries and reach­ing into new areas. It gives APEX course for cor­po­rate man­age­ment and staff as well as main­tains an aggres­sive pres­ence on uni­ver­sity campuses.

What does AOL add to my yoga prac­tice? It’s increased my lung capac­ity in a really short time; it’s increased my alert­ness; it’s given me meth­ods to refresh my mind through­out the day. By giv­ing me greater aware­ness and sen­si­tiv­ity to my breath, I’ve improved my con­cen­tra­tion and med­i­ta­tion. By com­ing to AOL and yoga together, I was able to see how much yoga could ben­e­fit me. At my first yoga class after the AOL intro course, I was able to get into deep bends and other poses and hold them because I was breath­ing more eas­ily and deeply. I sup­pose I could have to come the same con­di­tion through other meth­ods, but it would have taken more time.