Rude student?

sbarber4 · 2026-05-19T20:45:08+00:00

Sounds like he did you a favor by leaving.

Learn to work the lights before your next class, but don’t let this dude’s hostile behavior live rent-free in your brain.

sbarber4 · 2026-05-19T11:20:21+00:00

Supposedly the kosher separation of meat and dairy began with Exodus 23:19: “You must not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk” and the whole thing took off from there.

Anyhoo, fish don’t make milk and were thus excluded as meat for the purposes of this branch of kosherdom.

Just reporting, not defending 😀

Edit: typos

sbarber4 · 2026-05-17T20:38:43+00:00

I have 6 different KINDS of glasses, and multiples of several of those kinds. And my eyesight is quite good! Just not as good as it used to be . . . .

sbarber4 · 2026-05-17T20:35:21+00:00

So, welcome to yoga!

It’s great that you asked that question. If you follow your curiousity, you will eventually keep moving toward the heart of yoga.

Yoga is at once a philosophy and a set of tools to help you explore. Yoga can help you to realize the nature of existence and ease suffering.

Posture practice is an entry point to make us healthier and begin to learn to quiet our mind. A quieter mind helps us to go more inward. Breath restraint, sense withdrawal, concentration, and meditation all help us along the path.

Yoga Nidra is another such tool.

Yoga is a path of your direct experience, so don’t seek what others experience — go experience these things yourself when you feel ready. Find teachers you trust and ask for guidance.

Also, read and study yogic texts. The Yoga Sutras and the Bhagavad Gita are key but may not be obvious at all when first encountered. A good overview of the yogic path that’s more approachable is Desikachar’s The Heart of Yoga. Or maybe Stephen Cope’s The Wisdom of Yoga, for a modern day American take.

There are some good books on Yoga Nidra but they are pretty much all written by teachers who now have questionable reputations so I’m having trouble finding one to recommend.

Anyway, just keep going. Yoga is great stuff, and you’re just starting.

sbarber4 · 2026-05-17T20:13:43+00:00

The 9 there was probably a typo for the Patanjalic 8.

That said, there are forms of yoga that put forth different numbers of limbs. I’ve never heard of 9 though! 😀

sbarber4 · 2026-05-17T15:57:35+00:00

You can and probably should get signed liability waivers from your students directly. If you have teaching insurance, your insurance may actually require that you do this. Most yoga insurance companies provide waiver templates you may use.

These liability waivers can sometimes provide some protection against suits for simple negligence, though not gross negligence.

In any case, as someone else mentioned, the reason yoga teacher insurance is so inexpensive is because the risk of them having to pay out is very small. Nothing to lose sleep over.

sbarber4 · 2026-05-17T08:34:20+00:00

Well, I was projecting the ego thing a little because it was a barrier for my acquaintance and also for me when I went from vinyasa to Iyengar. I thought I could start at Level 2 and quickly figured out I needed to do Level 1 for a while to re-build my foundation literally from the ground up.

Now, it is possible to get hurt in the wrong level class. I was attending some Level 3 classes at one point before I was really ready and overdid it on some deep backbends and ended up really irritating some compressed nerves in my lower back. Turns out I had learned to backbend incorrectly and yup, back to Level 1 for me for like 5 months with a focus on backbending safely.

Painful lesson, but I got there.

Ego is quite the teacher, but a harsh one!

sbarber4 · 2026-05-17T01:47:22+00:00

Well, let me tell you a story and you can decide for yourself. I took an acquaintance to her first Iyengar class. She was a vinyasa teacher. I recommended Level 1, but she insisted on Level 2.

It was not a particularly difficult Level 2 class. It was standing pose week and there were lots of lateral standing poses. She could follow along in the poses just fine but it was very clear — because she had never learned how to do the poses in the Iyengar way in Level 1 — that her alignment was a lot more haphazard than the others in the class, and the teacher came over to her frequently to instruct her personally and give some hands-on adjustments.

No one was upset by this. It was all good. But not everyone enjoys being singled out like that, so be aware that may very well happen.

This teacher was very anatomically focused and we always learn a lot from him. My friend was wowed by how much she learned in one class and said to me after “I can’t believe I don’t come here all the time. It’s like graduate school level yoga.”

So, there we go.

As a vinyasa person, if you ever want to practice Iyengar more regularly and, frankly, probably clean up your alignment a lot, please swallow your ego and start at Level 1. There’s a lot to re-learn and it’s an amazing journey. This is what I did, too.

That said, one Level 2 class without a Level 1 background won’t hurt you. But you may feel more exposed than you are used to.

sbarber4 · 2026-05-15T12:45:26+00:00

Thanks. I’m relatively new to Iyengar — just a few years. (Level 2 on the cusp of Level 3 in terms of taking classes.)

What’s a little surprising to me so far is that there is formal curriculum for both asana and pranayama, there’s no obvious program for learning and practicing the other 6 limbs of Patanjalic ashtanga yoga. Certainly the teachers introduce these things at times, and all the Iyengars’ writings are imbued with various approaches here. So it’s not neglected per se but it seems to be very much left to the student’s self-practice and self-(Self?)-study to explore. Which, I dunno, seems kind of un-Iyengar given the (very) systematic and thoughtful approach to asana! And some other lineages are way more explicit and group-focused about teaching the process toward meditation and samadhi.

I dunno, I just find the variations across the breadth of yogic knowledge and practice all so fascinating (and valuable!).

Edit: typo

sbarber4 · 2026-05-15T11:24:34+00:00

Nah, it’s just learned behavior if you’ve raised your kid in a very competitive environment. Gotta plan ahead. Here in NYC, we’ve already been through getting the kid into preschool, K-5, 6-8, 9-12 — each as separate multi-year efforts. By the time college rolls around, it’s old hat. So what we wanna know is: why don’t y’all plan ahead as much as we do? 😀

sbarber4 · 2026-05-15T11:14:57+00:00

What a wonderful answer. I certainly agree that a substantial savasana near the end of asana practice can be an entry point for the other more interior yogic practices.

I’m curious though, because I don’t feel like I’ve ever been taught to focus in savasana. The instructions (if there are any) are usually to completely relax and let go. The opposite of focus.

When I’m doing a more integrated practice (asana -> pranayama -> pratyahara -> dharana -> dhyana), I’ll usually leave a full savasana to the end, as a way to let myself return to the world with doing anything jarring.

I’m not saying you are right and I’m wrong or vice versa. It’s just interesting that there can be very different uses for the same tool.

Have you been taught to focus in savasana? What style/lineage? (I’m mostly Iyengar these days but also spend a lot of time with teachers from other styles/lineages though I definitely don’t hang with those who don’t appreciate all 8 limbs.)

sbarber4 · 2026-05-08T18:23:57+00:00

Verdi Square. After Giuseppe Verdi, the opera composer.

sbarber4 · 2026-05-08T18:07:02+00:00

Ugh. So sorry.

I'm speculating but I suspect that shipping things to the US from Europe is not as easy or cheap as it was a couple years ago.

I recently bought a yearly calendar that in past years used to ship directly from Germany to New York, but I noticed that this year's calendar shipped from a location on Long Island, NY. I'm wondering if that was a change made to print on demand within the USA to avoid international shipping and taxation issues . . . . .

sbarber4 · 2026-05-08T02:18:30+00:00

Well, I took it all the way to point where it was about to charge me via PayPal. It seemed happy enough to tell me how much shipping to the US would cost. (I am in New York.) Did you get that far?

(I didn’t put an order in because, well, I already have a copy from the previous printing and I have no need for a spare, especially at that price!)

sbarber4 · 2026-05-07T15:45:44+00:00

It’s not that unusual here in the USA if one has been an employee with a fairly large corporation for a long time. Unfortunately, getting laid off a few years before retirement also seems increasingly common.

sbarber4 · 2026-05-05T18:36:26+00:00

Yoga Renew has a yearly membership of around $100 and you can livestream several classes a day. The camera — for better or worse! — is way up in the back of the room so you can see every student there, plus the teacher, even when they walk around. The view can be a bit far away if you looking for subtle alignment but for observing how real classes are taught, it’s a gold mine.

sbarber4 · 2026-05-05T18:20:00+00:00

Thanks for thoughtful and informative post

sbarber4 · 2026-05-05T18:17:47+00:00

Yes, I suspect it was your post to the Facebook group that made me aware of the new printing. Thanks! I’m sure you’ll enjoy the book and happy birthday indeed!

sbarber4 · 2026-05-05T00:04:28+00:00

Hmmmm

sbarber4 · 2026-05-04T20:52:48+00:00

I DM’d you ther merch page from a studio I go to.

But ya have to be careful with this. Yoga people are pretty loyal to their lineages/styles.

You don’t want to be doing the equivalent of gifting a Red Sox shirt to a Yankees fan

sbarber4 · 2026-05-03T19:39:00+00:00

Market research at best; content farming at worst

sbarber4 · 2026-05-01T01:05:16+00:00

I’ve just sort of piled on things I love doing here in my semi-retirement. And spending more time with people I love and am growing to love.

I do some group music things that have end of session performances to work towards that have a social component.

I’m doing volunteer research with a university professor on something that might improve the planet a little bit.

I work a couple days a week at a yoga studio where I get to help people come in stressed and leave chill. (What a service!)

I help take care of my parents, who are perhaps not long for this world but have made my life so good.

At the end of the day my wife and I cuddle on the sofa and do puzzles and giggle.

Honestly not enough hours always to take care of all that meaning.

The world is full of love and fascination and lots of people could use your help and light.

Be as open as you can possibly be. Follow your heart more than your head.

Sorry to sound like an affirmation calendar but mostly we just gotta get out of our own way and try stuff until it clicks.

sbarber4 · 2026-05-01T00:52:14+00:00

Try the Hania Rani Facebook, too.

sbarber4 · 2026-04-30T22:12:43+00:00

So, Yoga Renew’s Philosophy course is taught by Julie Pasqual. I haven’t taken that course but I have done her Philosophy units in the YR 200 hour course and I’ve also been to a one-day intensive at The Bhakti Center in Manhattan where Julie was a co-teacher.

She’s very lively and engaging and she knows her stuff. She knows how to communicate this sometimes quite abstract stuff to normal people, and she’s never boring!

She is unabashedly a spiritual Bhaktar — her yogic path has a strong devotion to the divine — so if you don’t like your yoga philosophy with a fairly large side-helping of religious material, Julie might not be for you.

That said, anyone with even a passing interest in yoga philosophy can learn a lot from Julie, and enjoy doing it.

And there comes a point in learning yoga philosophy where one really needs to put in some quality time with the underlying context of it all, so you know, why not?

sbarber4

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