Thank you for your thoughtful replies!
I realize most people in here don't live close enough to me to normally be able to take one of my classes--right now I'm mostly looking for personal thoughts that can help me create focused classes. Each class would be unique, so it's difficult to say specifically what would be included in a class.
Yoga is really more about finding mental clarity and emotional healing than it is about stretching. I mentioned briefly in the Hinduism thread that the physical aspects that most people think of when they think of yoga are mostly about making the body a more comfortable "vessel" for the conscious mind and to prepare you mentally for living as your true self. In the process of transforming your body, you increase flexibilty, open your hips, improve your posture, reduce anxiety, reduce fear, and improve your breathing and voice. But it would be unfortunate to think of yoga as a kind of religion and let that misperception prevent you from practicing it.
To borrow from the poet Osho, yoga is like peeling an onion. From the time we are born we begin building complex intellectual constructs about who we are as layers on top of layers, based on our life experiences. Yoga is the process of peeling away those layers like the layers of an onion...all the social constructs we've built about our gender, how we relate to our bodies, how we relate to other people, etc., so that we can bring our truest self to the surface and build a new relationship to our world, without those false constructs inhibiting us in our transformation.
It might be simple and easy to just talk about stretching your hamstrings, having better control of your voice and breathing, lengthening your neck, improving your posture, changing the shape of your rib cage, etc., but yoga is really much more than that.
So in that context, I'm asking what people find that they struggle with during transition and beyond (things that I may not have thought of)...physically, emotionally, behaviorally, etc., which might help me construct yoga classes to address in different ways.
Peace + Light
