Teaching Yoga in a Distracting Environment

Yoga Discussion General Yoga
#1

Hello all, I was hoping you could offer some insight to help with one of my classes. I currently teach a beginner’s yoga class at an Army post. It’s a small gym and most of my students are military spouses with pre-school age children. There is no on-site child care, but there is a kid’s playroom in the corner of the room where we practice yoga, so many of the women bring their kids and let them play. Some days the kids are quiet and we get a good relaxing practice in. Other days, the kids are chaotic and running around the room, and it’s very hard to get the students to stay present in their bodies (or even to stay on their mats sometimes) when their kids are screaming.

Does anyone have experience teaching (or practicing) in a similar environment, or have advice for how to maintain better control of the class amidst the chaos? I don’t want to alienate my students or tell them how to handle their kids. I just want them to be able to relax and practice yoga.

#2

Well, Sarena, this is a challenging position. Most students will not be able to practice with that much distraction, so it will be difficult to impossible to teach in such an environment. The final relaxation in savasana - so important to yogasana practice - will be nearly impossible. You do need to work out a solution. In the meantime, perhaps the mothers could take turns in watching over the kids during class?

#3

I have taught a very loud distracting class too. I was teaching at a studio where they would have kid’s yoga at the same time as the regular adult yoga, just outside of the room, separated by a curtain. The kids would be running around in our class, calling “Mom! MOMM!!”, laughing, falling, eating snacks, all while I was teaching. It was very distracting and frustrating as a teacher. I was actually beginning to really dislike teaching the class, and was planning on quitting teaching that class in particular, but the studio I was teaching at decided to stop doing the kids yoga at that time, so things got better.

I don’t think there is much you can do. As parents, the top priority for most of them will be kids over yoga, not the other way around. Unless the situation itself somehow changes, I think the only thing you can do is be ok with the students having a bit of practice, maybe not as full and focused class as you like, but a little here and there, because that’s all that’s possible in this situation.

I teach Mom and Baby yoga, and during most of the class I have babies crying, babies squealing, moms breast feeding, moms getting up and then coming back… And that’s ok. I do the best I can do, and I don’t teach the class as I would a regular vinyasa class. I keep it very chunky and segmented. I keep little spaces between the poses for everyone to check up on the baby, settle in if they were just breast feeding, etc. Then I go into another pose. So it’s more like pose… break… pose… break. I find this help bring everyone together during the poses more than trying to fight against distractions. It also really loosened up my teaching style for Mom and Baby and I found it to be a style that really worked for that class in particular. I felt like I was going with the flow of things, rather than fighting against it.

At least the women are making it out to yoga each week, and I’m sure that means a lot to them. In there minds, it’s either this or no yoga, so this is better! Good luck!!!

#4

Sarena,

the first thing I would do is begin educating the parents about nutrition. As you build a trust, include information about sugar and its effects on child behavior. This could be one way to really help your students as they may start to “get” the effects of what they are putting in to their children’s bodies relative to what they are getting out.

The second thing I would do, presuming you cannot move the class or find soe more pragmatic/logistical solution is to teach the students how to use the external as a refence point for the internal. How does the student let go of the outer senses - the smells, tastes, noises, feeling, and go inside for the process of self-study. All of those sounds can be facilitators of a deeper practice rather than a call to stay outside the body. But of course this takes time and teaching.

#5

[quote=InnerAthlete;30611]How odd. I responded to this very soon after you posted - was the first respondent, and now that reply is gone. Very weird.

Mods???[/quote]

http://www.yogaforums.com/forums/f11/site-moved-5888.html

gordon, check of this thread that david added and get ahold of him. btw, i don’t believe there are mods at yogaforums.com any longer – just david as admin and sole mod at present…though maybe not?

can we remove gordon’s question and my response as clean-up?

#6

We are truly blessed in the West. Our Western environment offers lots of suffering conditions that act as causes for us actualising bodhicitta (our loving kindness attitude), so life here can be very worthwhile.

In a situation like this it is important for you to remain calm and collected and lead by example, first of all showing your class that you can still lead them amidst the chaos. I was once in such a situation where I took a class for three weeks for another teacher who allows children to come with their parents to class. What I did was to call all the children together and invited them to do yoga with us and if they get bored they can go and play aside again. It worked like a charm, soon most of them were bored with the slow movement and holding of the asanas and one by one they dropped out and retreated to their playing area. I did this with every class and by week three at the end of my time there, the children kept away from us completely. The noise was still there, but as IA explained above use the external as a reference point for the internal.