What a weekend! My friend Erin came up from NYC to join me and Dawn in an intensive yoga weekend. Turned out to leave us all sore and sweaty, but totally refreshed (after the hour long hot shower, of course). Two of the most intensive yoga styles compounded into one weekend, no wonder it was a boot camp! Between Baron Baptiste's style of power yoga in a heated HOT HOT HOT room, and Dharma Mittra's acrobatic style, we were "oranges that are squeezed to make orange juice" as Baron Baptiste likes to say. The range of classes and workshops ran the gamut, from mantra and chanting to pilates-like ab workouts. The people we met included beautiful Coeli Marsh from Cambridge, MA to Bapuji from a little village in India. And when it was all over, boy did we all sleep well on Sunday!
Coeli Marsh
Baptiste Master Teacher
July 28th & 29th!
A Conversation with Baptiste Master Teacher Coeli Marsh
DOWNDOG: So many people, who become yoga teachers, have advanced degrees like your Masters Degree in Human Development and Psychology from Harvard University. How did you decide to take you life in this direction and do you find your academic training comes in handy as a yoga teacher?
COELI: No matter what you come to yoga with, as a teacher, you're going to use not just your degrees but more importantly you're going to call on your life experience. One of the things that is so powerful about Baron's teacher training is the focus on letting go of knowledge so you can come into your own potential. Once you stop clinging to all thisstuff – the book knowledge, the readings and the quotes – you can integrate that kind of knowledge, when necessary, but not out of fear or a desire to hide.
When you come into yoga teaching with a lot of knowledge it can actually be a problem. Often we find the more studying and knowledge and PhDs people have, the harder it is for them to get to the essence of things. Baron is really a master of being in the process of unlearning and peeling away of the excess knowledge. That's why it's so freeing. There is nothing wrong with getting a masters degree or a PhD. But you can get lost in it and hide behind it, just the way we can get stuck in yoga knowledge.
In my particular case, my degree in psychology and education just deepened my appreciation and understanding for people and learning. And my specialization in risk and prevention is really a commitment to transformation, growth and change.
