I recently went back to Japan to visit my family. My mother is also a yoga teacher and I wanted to share my experience of her classes.
She is now 71 years old and has been teaching yoga full time for over forty-five years. Apparently, she even used to take me along as a baby – I probably didn’t do that much yoga so I can’t claim to have practiced since then :)
Until recently, she taught many classes to support our family. She was a single mother until she married my father in law, Sochan. He gradually got into yoga and began assisting her class. After teaching in Kobe for many years together, they moved to Okinawa to retire. Okinawa is a beautiful small sub-tropical island off mainland Japan.
Although technically now retired, she still teaches yoga. She said that it keeps her from becoming forgetful so wants to teach as long as she can. Luckily, there are many lovely community halls for her classes and they’re usually near the beautiful sea. She only charges 500 yen (about £3.50) so that everyone can come along. In fact, her oldest students are in their mid 80’s and there are lots of students with different physical and mental issues such as Parkinson and alcoholism.
Her yoga classes are like nothing I’ve come across before. They usually give everyone a short massage to check and relax their bodies. She said that this is when her lesson plan’s created – by looking at the student’s body. She has an idea of what to teach each week but this can change depending on who comes along and what they’re bodies like.
Her classes are always accessible to everyone. There are no levels like beginners, intermediate or advanced, it’s open to all. The practice is not about perfecting postures or movements but feeling the body and focusing the mind. She often says,
‘if we are too caught up with form and appearance, we will miss the most important things in our practice which is connecting and understanding ourselves’.
Most of the movements are simple and fluid to encourage relaxation and remove tension. She found that people commonly take several years just to learn how to truly relax. Her classes interweave personal experience as well as ancient Indian and Japanese philosophy and movement practice. All the students seemed to be focused and enjoying themselves. The real sense of community in her classes is inspirational.
We also exchanged ideas and practice when we were at home. I taught her some strengthening exercises and sound work and she showed me Japanese massage and relaxation techniques. It was amazing to see even after so many years of teaching yoga, she was still so open to learning. It was such a special experience and I learnt so many important things from her.
I promised myself that I’d go back to visit more often, as I usually only go back to Japan every four to seven years. In the mean time, I will share some of the practices that I learnt from my mother in future blogs.
Bristol Yoga Centre also offer community classes so that our classes are accessible to everyone. See here for more details on our community classes.