Yoga with Nikki Chau » Art of Teaching

Guns N’ Roses, Fame, Marketing, and Yoga

Nikki Chau — Sun, 30 May 2010 06:04:10 +0000

I had always figured the band name Guns N’ Roses was an arbitrary choice, depicting a certain image of a certain lifestyle and all that. Then, last week, I found out how they really got their name: it was from the names of the band members Axl Rose and Tracii Guns (hey, thanks Cary!). I [...]

Support Your Local Yoga Teacher

Nikki Chau — Mon, 24 May 2010 04:57:16 +0000

I’ve been giving this post a lot of munching, mulling, and milling. In other words, I’ve been procrastinating. It’s not because I don’t want to write about it, it’s because I keep convincing myself that I don’t have enough: not enough information, not enough well-thought out reasons, not enough cohesive call to action, etc. In [...]

Support Your Local Yoga Teacher – An Interview with Laura DeFreitas

Nikki Chau — Mon, 17 May 2010 08:09:03 +0000

I first got to know Laura DeFreitas about a year and a half ago when she became an independent yoga teacher and started teaching at Taj Yoga, where I teach now, and where I was doing my yoga teacher training with Pacific Yoga at the time. Wanting to support her new business, and as a [...]

Support Your Local Yoga Teacher – An Interview with Greg Owen

Nikki Chau — Sun, 16 May 2010 07:42:08 +0000

I first met Greg Owen at a Tias Little workshop in Seattle. I had been taking notes all day on my iPhone, making Greg curious enough to ask if I was really taking notes or just texting the whole time. After showing him how I took notes, my super duper tapping skillz impressed Greg so [...]

Support Your Local Yoga Teacher – An Interview with Diana Bonyhadi

Nikki Chau — Sat, 15 May 2010 07:04:38 +0000

I met up with Diana Bonyhadi, a fellow graduate of Pacific Yoga Teacher Training, at Grimaldi’s, a great local coffee shop in Issaquah, Washington. Her husband showed up for a short minute to give her a kiss and shared a cookie with us, and was off to work, leave me to chat with her.

What made [...]

Goal vs. Intention – Yoga Teacher to Yoga Teacher

Nikki Chau — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 07:41:46 +0000

This is another video in the New Yoga Teacher to New Yoga Teacher series, part of my work to support new yoga teachers. Here I talk about how to deal with both good days and bad days, and yes, they do happen. As they say about riding and laying down a motorcycle: it’s not a [...]

Your Gym is a Terrible Place to Do Yoga – What Your Yoga Teacher Will Tell You, Part 3

Nikki Chau — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 03:35:44 +0000

This is part 3 of What Your Yoga Teacher Will Tell You, a response to the Smart Money article: 10 Things Your Yoga Teacher Won’t Tell You. Read Part 1 and Part 2.

6. “Your gym is a terrible place to do yoga.”

Not surprisingly, gyms have jumped on the yoga bandwagon. Although most gyms try to hire good [...]

New Yoga Teacher to New Yoga Teacher – Tools to Improve Your Teaching

Nikki Chau — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 08:53:11 +0000

From having no experience teaching at all, the first couple months of teaching yoga is where you can potentially learn and grow the most in your teaching.

When I first started, I had the luxury of having Jean Massimo, an Anusara-inspired teacher at Village Green Yoga, in my class, observing and taking notes, mentoring, and [...]

New Yoga Teacher to New Yoga Teacher – How We Teach

Nikki Chau — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:12:11 +0000

Something that has been on my mind lately is how to help out new yoga teachers as they start out. I’ve barely begun this career myself, and I’ve learned much and documented what I’ve been through. It dawned on me that there aren’t a whole lot of resources out there for new yoga teachers. Or [...]

Yoga Student Teacher Prayer

Nikki Chau — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 06:41:52 +0000

This is a prayer that we chant before the Sanskrit/Philosophy/Pranayama portion with our teacher Kathryn Payne in the 500-hour Yoga Teacher Training at Pacific Yoga.

Sanskrit: oṃ saha nāvavatu saha nau bhunaktu saha vīryaṃ karavāvahai tejasvi nāvadhī tamastu mā vidviṣāvahai oṃ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ śāntiḥ

English: May we be protected together. May we be nourished together. May we create strength among one another. May our [...]