Among other things, I'm the guy who says yes to going in at 8 am on a Saturday to teach yoga to a high school swim team, even though I've never taught yoga before. I've already recently introduced myself when I launched this blog, so to answer the Holidailies prompt, I thought I'd go in a different direction so as not to be a mere re-hash for those readers who've been with me for years.
I am neither our local fitness instructor who leads weekly yoga classes around here nor am I my friend from college who spent a month last summer at an intensive yoga teacher training workshop, so I did feel a bit underqualified to be leading this class. But then, I have been dabbling in yoga off and on for almost two decades now, and one of those decades has been spent teaching English and/or music at the high school and college levels, so neither yoga nor teaching daunts me on its own.
And that, right there, says a fair bit about me. First, I'm a dabbler. I prefer the term Renaissance Man, but those are just two sides of the same coin, you say potato, I say Frontier Russet, German Butterball, Keuka Gold, Purple Majesty, Rose Gold, or Yukon Gold. What it amounts to is knowing a little bit about a lot. Look up in the header, you'll see some of the lot that I know a little of. And I like trying new things.
Second, I'm a teacher. First, I was a student, and I've always loved being a student. Not that there weren't aspects of it along the way that I didn't like, but for the most part, I liked learning about a lot of things and I was fairly good at it. I hope that I have been, in my time, a fair teacher as well: certainly, that's an inclination of mine, to explain things, to guide inquiry, to help. I've taught choirs, and general music classes, and various high school English classes. I've coached tennis and soccer and basketball. And I have an 11-month-old daughter, which surely means a lot of teaching on the horizon. But, I should hasten to add, although I'm currently working in education, I am not employed as a teacher.
In any case, these are the characteristics that found me leading a yoga class on Saturday morning: dabbling, teaching, and being willing to pitch in and help out. By the time it was done, I felt great, not only because I'd put myself through an hour and a half of yoga but also because the team seemed to genuinely appreciate it. I can't count how many of the girls left saying "I feel really good!" And that makes me feel good.
No single anecdote could introduce me--or anyone else--but I hope you'll take this as a handshake and keep coming back.
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