“Is he STILL talking?! For the LOVE, send an email!'“
I love to teach.
I love to share with a group of students what I’m studying and practicing in that fascinating intersection between our humanness and our beingness and how we can practice being at that intersection with yoga and meditation.
Teaching is an honor and a privilege.
But there was a day that rather than teaching, what I was really doing was was abusing my students with information.
“Enough about the 5 acts of Shiva! When are we going to start to breathe and move, already?!”
Their mouths didn’t say it but I could read it on their vacant stares, slacked jaws, and furtive glances at their watches.
Soon enough, I realized I could be more spare in my talking at the beginning of class and save the longer points of discussion and details for an email. Instead of long-winded lectures before class, I could share a brief but organized mini-teaching which gave a clear direction and a theme to the class. This provided us more time for to explore the theme through movement and breath or through meditation and acted as a teaser to whet the appetite for those who wanted to go deeper. And for those interested in going deeper, I’d invite them to join my newsletter at the end of class.
I started sending an email out at the beginning of the week with one primary theme which I could weave into all my classes. It forecasted what we would be working on in class, what we could be practicing outside of class off the mat, and included the more detailed and longer points of what I now keep brief but organized at the beginning of class.
Soon people started coming to class precisely because of what I said we’d be working on during the week. On several occasions I heard, “I wasn’t planning on coming to class today but when I read that we were going to be working on ______ I couldn’t pass it up.”
Then, what I also found to be fascinating was that as we applied those concise ideas to movement, mindfulness, and breath during a practice of teaching or Yoga Nidra, our collective understanding of the themes and concepts started to grow exponentially. By the end of the week, I wanted to send out another email, a postscript, to highlight everything that I’d learned about the topic during a week of applying the principles to the practice. Fascinating.
I soon realized that I was writing to discover. It’s true. Often I start writing with a few loosely-formed ideas and by the time I’m done, the act of writing has organized my thoughts, chiseled away all the superfluous, and I’m left with immense clarity about what I’m trying to say. Writing actually teaches me about the very subject I’m writing about. Amazing.
For me, being a writer and being a teacher are the same things.
I’d love to teach you about sending out your newsletters to benefit your students and to support your own personal learning.
I’m offering a live, online, and recorded training this Saturday, July 22nd, about the magic of emails and I’d love to share with you more of my experiences and knowledge about writing emails to help you learn this powerful mode of connecting with and supporting your students as well as supporting your own discovery.
It’s live, online via Zoom and recorded for replay in case you can’t catch it live.
Today is the day to register for this. I’m inviting you to take a second right now and make the simple and easy investment of registering for this training. Take advantage of this easy but essential skill that will make all the difference in your teaching, your business, and in your own discovery.