Observing your pain
& a core and balance focused flow to eagle pose
Hi buddies,
Nico’s Flows is my regular newsletter designed to help yoga teachers plan meaningful, intentional classes. Each post includes readings and reflections, curated yoga music, and vinyasa yoga sequences for teachers or anyone who loves to move.
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Dharma Talk
I’m moving through a breakup right now that completely blindsided me. As a yoga teacher, sometimes it feels wrong to be in so much pain. I hold this expectation that I should be able to move through every situation with grace, gratitude, and unwavering equanimity.
But that has not been my experience.
So many old wounds have been stirred up. There has been so much grief in losing someone I thought of as my best friend. And when I sit with everything that’s arising, I remember that this is exactly why yoga became a practice in the first place.
Because it is deeply human to suffer.
We experience grief, fear, heartbreak, uncertainty, and change. Yoga doesn’t ask us to avoid these experiences or pretend they aren’t there. It asks us to observe them. To be with them. To allow them to move through us without becoming consumed by them or allowing them to become our identity.
I recently came across this poem by Yung Pueblo that beautifully captures what I think of as the middle path:
when we disconnect from our pain we stop growing when we are dominated by our pain we stop growing freedom is observing our pain letting it go and moving forward (middle path)
To theme a class on this...
One of the reasons I love both yoga and Buddhism is that neither begins with the assumption that life should always feel good. Both traditions begin with the understanding that suffering is an inevitable part of being human. We will all experience grief, heartbreak, fear, uncertainty, aging, and loss.
The practices aren’t meant to eliminate pain. They give us tools to move through it.
You might invite students to notice the difference between sensation and reaction throughout class. When something becomes uncomfortable, can they simply observe what is happening before immediately trying to change it or escape it? Can they soften around the experience without pretending it isn’t there?
As the practice unfolds, you can continue returning to the idea that yoga isn’t asking us to disconnect from our pain, nor to become consumed by it. It invites us to witness our experience with compassion so that our emotions inform us rather than define us.
The hope isn’t to leave class without pain. The hope is to leave with a little more capacity to be with whatever life brings.
Sequence Inspiration
Because my mind and heart have felt a little scattered lately, I wanted to build a flow centered around strength and stability.
This sequence weaves together core work and balance to create a grounding practice that builds toward a variety of Eagle Pose variations. Sometimes the most supportive thing we can do is return to the simple feeling of being steady in our own body.
