I've had a variety of yoga teachers over the past couple years, and I've noticed that now that yoga is super common and the instructors are dime-a-dozen, they tend to develop the class according to their own "personalities" by way of adding a signature and keeping people coming back to their own particular class. Right now I have an ENFp and ENFx instructor, and I've noticed that, at least for me, I don't like their style as much as I liked an SLI instructor I used to have back in the day.
The SLI was an
amazing teacher. She was totally no frills no fuss, she never came around and helped people individually, and after class she was rather stand offish. She did the whole routine with us, described every move technically perfectly (right foot x inches away from chin, feel the stretch in y, hold for z seconds); always had the right music on, warm up music, then up tempo music, then meditation music; never missed anything or felt the need to put on a show or anything like that. I started taking her class when I was going through some tough opiate withdrawals, having quit cold turkey right after college, and at the time I couldn't do anything for more than 10 mins without getting irritated and depressed. But I could sit through this SLI's class for a whole hour without ever having my mind wander, bc her routine was very well thought out and executed in a way that didn't leave any room for me to think of anything else.
The IEE is pretty adorable and bubbly, very personable and tries to make one-on-one contact with people outside of class. But she's also a scatterbrain and her instructions are almost impossible to follow if you are just listening. She messes up right and left, the number of counts we're supposed to hold, and if she gets the feeling that we're not totally in love with her she'll make us do something really hard for way too long, or she'll straight up say, no one's smiling at me! Are you all waiting for my class to end? Today, after she couldn't properly explain exactly at what degree to lift one leg, she even said I can't do that technical stuff, just do it like this *shows us* ...except, we can't all look up while we are doing downward dog on two hands..
I have to say it's pretty annoying.
The ENFx is a little better with descriptions, and has a lot of energy. But he kind of is big on putting on a show, like if he says right foot instead of left foot, he'll make us do the entire thing again, just so he can narrate with uninterrupted flourish. Like, saying "sorry I meant left foot" and then dropping it at that is not possible with both the IEE and this guy. This ENFx guy also likes to preach at the end, when we are doing resting pose.. he'll tell us some thought he had and connect it to "yoga" (as a theme for life). The SLI was always dead silent during the resting pose, with vibrating meditation music on. Oh and the ENFx plays terrible loud pop music, like he has to show his personality off through every outlet available.. except this isn't about him at all.
All in all I like the ENFx class more bc it feels like a more wholesome workout, but I can't help but think that I really really miss the SLI's class. Yoga really is about
, if we have to attach a function for it, and while I think a lot of IEEs would benefit greatly from doing yoga, just like IEIs I'm not sure if either one of us should be teaching it. I have memorized everything the SLI taught and do it on my own, but I doubt I could describe everything as fluidly as she could to a whole class.