So a blog post about my challenges with Sanskrit comes at the perfect time. This weekend at yoga teacher training I will be asked to teach both Opening and Closing mantra's of the primary series, and speak through the Sun Salutations with Sanskrit counting. The word nervous doesn't quite describe it.
All my life language has been a big challenge for me. I went through phases of trying Italian and French and with not much luck. It's known, us British are terribly lazy to learn second languages, but really I wanted to prove everyone wrong. I wouldn't be lazy and I would learn. But the hardest thing is after many many years of only speaking English, my pronunciation was atrocious. I was embarrassed and nervous, although keen to make an effort, but any person I would speak to who would laugh or smile, or even correct me would send me one step back. Less reluctant for me to speak out loud.
Now I'm going through it all again with Sanskrit, we read, we write, we listen, we repeat, we teach trying to say it all confidently. But to be honest I avoid it whenever possible. When I'm teaching poses, I'm usually only using the English name, admittedly because many asana's have similar sounding names, and they are so long i forget, but mainly because I'm scared my class will not know what I'm talking about. But imagine, right now I'm only saying it out loud infront of my ytt classmates, who are also learning, but the moment I will have my own class, I will fall to pieces. I think I will truly avoid, then I will never get better. So recently I have made a pact to get this down to a tee. To speak up and speak proud. I love saying the mantra's and often find myself walking around the house chanting it out loud, which beats the nursery rhyme's I pick up from work. I've been listening to different teachers online, to find if they chant in different ways I am used to. For months I had only ever had Shareen say the mantra's out loud, but I recently started at AYCT (The Ashtanga Yoga Centre of Toronto) and it was funny how shocked I was to hear just a new way to say it. No way is right or wrong, but each brings individuality to your practice. I've now even recorded it on my phone and listen to it when waiting for a bus (all in preparation for this weekend). I listen to the counts and visualize the sun salutations in my mind, and I do wonder what I look like, because I'm holding back movements. I've always thought my teacher Shareen was a great teacher, but I have really started to realize how every time she teaches she uses sanskrit and the respect I have for her effort to use it whenever possible. I've been with her so much through the teacher training, how much easier this is for me now to understand and familiarize myself with the words. Now I realize when teachers are also like me now, and focus only on the minimal sanskrit words they know. As a teacher I want to teach my students the words, the correct way, to show I understand the yoga routes and that it's more about poses, but there is history and there is passion I want to portray.
For now Namsate
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