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Showing posts from March, 2012

Teaching in a different language; no more Soy Lattes after class?

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I've been teaching in Turkish for a while now, and it's interesting to observe that it's not easy! I was expecting this, it did not come as a surprise. There really was no way to prepare for actual interactions with students in a different language than I have been accustomed to. Even if I rehearsed, read Turkish yoga books, or wrote down a sample class in Turkish (all which I did), nothing can replace the actual moment where the interaction has to take place organically. Only in my 12th class did I feel like I was relaying almost everything I wanted to, in the way I wanted to, that felt natural to me, in Turkish. (and even then it felt incomplete) I felt like my yoga teacher self again, who I had felt had disappeared in the first few classes. In those classes I felt like a child, who'd say to an adult "I know so much more than I can explain, honestly, I can say all this in a more worldly way...really! just wait." My teachings truly felt like they were Lost in