Inspiration for Teaching

Sometimes having to have a JOB to teach yoga is difficult. This week was one of those weeks. I found myself extremely frustrated and feeling backed into corners as i attempted to relate with my jobs outside of just the teaching the classes aspects.

So i went to a book i find very comforting. a book that is pretty long and i tend to read it for a while then put it away and then pick it back up and start right where i left off. this time two parts of the story really stood out for me.

The book is called How Yoga Works by Geshe Michael Roach and Christie McNally. it is the story of a young girl from Tibet who is held up in a jail in India and begins to teach the Captain of the jail yoga... and all that follows. truly though, it is a study and commentary on the yoga sutras.

in the first part the Captain has just made a big mistake and now must hear from his teacher about it, she is upset because he in essence has called her an employee:

" Yoga cannot be taught that way. Even if this place were some fancy school; even if i owned it, and you came here for classes; even if you were paying me in some way, still the yoga would never come to you - I could never grant you the yoga, you see, even if i wanted to and tried to - unless you regarded me as a teacher should be regarded and that is with respect, deep respect.
Oh it's not that teachers are some kind of faultless beings; it's not that we're not susceptible to our own problems, or that students should follow their teachers blindly.
But we are, you see, vessels; we hold something inside us which is bigger and much more beautiful than us as individuals. Yoga, you see, it began back - long back, long long even before the Master first wrote it down. And it has been passed down - poured from vessel to vessel, poured from teacher to student, and then to their students - for hundreds and hundreds of centuries. It has survived not just in books but in living persons, in the words and touch and thoughts shared between living beings: something beyond what a book can do.
And if all books are precious beyond all measure, the combined knowledge of generation after generation of effort and pain, mistake and discovery - then our teachers are so much more. For regardless of what we think of a teacher, regardless of the weaknesses and faults we may see in them, they are still the one and only door we have to the living experience of countless generations of teachers who came before. Ultimately every teacher contains the knowledge of all teachers before them; ultimately even someone as young and inexperienced as me holds the very water that was poured in to Master Patanjali by his own Master, and which he poured in his own students. And in that sense yes i am a master too, I am your Master, because i am your teacher.
Again, i want you to know. i don't mean Master in a religious sense, say. I don't mean that you should bow to me or give me things or anything like that. What i do mean is that you should respect me, respect me, not for me, but for yourself. It is the kind of respect and affection that one would have for a doctor who has been your doctor for your whole life; who has seen you through everything from baby colds to the more serious illnesses that strike us over lifetimes.
And when a patient or a student has this kind of regard or respect for the doctor or the teacher - and i mean no matter what the teacher is teaching them - then something happens; a kind of magic is let loose. A 'blessing' the Master calls it. All the power of the healing, all the power of generation upon generation of people who struggled to learn and then learned and then granted that great gift onto the next generation, so it would live - so they could live - all that power is released to you.
And then you see, the healing will happen. The yoga will work. And otherwise - if you.... if you think of me the way you have been doing, and I'm not talking about mistakes that happen like that...., but if you don't respect me, as a teacher, as your teacher, then you will never get better. And one day you will just lose interest, and go on to something else and never find out how much farther your healing can go."

WHEW!!! so that gave me moment to think! i mean THIS is what i am supposed to inspire in my student. utmost respect as i am continuing the line of the great teachers i have been so gifted to learn from so far and all of their teachers before them. so it isn't about all the tiny problems that can come up when you have to have it as a job. yoga is so much more and i'd better keep my eye and heart there rather than worrying about the rest.



the second part she is educating her student about not showing off his new physical skills gained from yoga because it can actually set him back in his progress on the path....

" But i also wanted to say that it's not vain at all to feel an honest happiness - a healthy sort of pride- about the progress you have made, and how good you really do look and feel when you're doing your yoga regularly, and for good reasons: with the idea that you might help others. And then even when others see you, and admire your progress, it's a good think; you are fulfilling your goal of being an inspiration for them to heal themselves too.
And i was thinking, you know about the difference," I continued. " Because it's such a fine line, and we are all so weak, you see, and we can slip so easily from being honestly happy about feeling better into thoughts of vanity and competitiveness. And it occurred to me that one thing to keep an eye on as we continue to make progress would be our feelings about others making the same progress.
I mean, if we're doing yoga because we want to inspire others to do it too, so they can heal themselves too, then if someone like the Seargent began to do yoga, and suddenly got very good at it - able to do things we ourselves hadn't been able to do even after years of work - then i think our feelings about that would tell the story.
I mean, if our motivation was pure, then we'd be excited and supportive: we'd let him know what a wonderful job he was doing. And if on the other hand we had started to slip into vanity, then i think we'd feel threatened somehow: we'd feel unhappy about his progress. And then that - that very basic, disappointing form of dislike for someone - would really start to choke our own channels, and ruin whatever progress we had been making."


SO that one helped me stop and go back to why i really want to teach yoga... to HELP people. not just to help them in their poses but to help them in their LIVES. to be patient and let the yoga unfold for them as it will but hopefully to bring them millimeter by millimeter closer to health on all levels of their beings. that said, i'd love for any of my students to come with me to workshops, i'd love for any of my students to become inspired to become teachers and to deepen their practices even if that means they out grow me. it doesn't matter if they are continuing to find health and beauty and fun and love in the practice. that's so much more what it's all about.

now newly refocused i just feel SO much better. sometimes we need those moments to realign with our highest. to align with the divine as they say in anusara speak.

Admin Note

Obviously the blog has been on a bit of a break. i've been a bit distracted by morning sickness and extreme fatigue to the point of not really wanting to get out of bed. but as i'm into the second trimester of my first pregnancy now i have more energy and am ready to come back full swing to blogging away. (if anyone reads anymore)

Melting Heart

Last night i took Maria's class in DC and we worked on backbending. i LOVE backbending so this is great. and a fabulous fun class, not just all the standard backbends, lots of fun variations including what i call "Spiderman" where you walk down and up the wall with your hands. so fun!

at the very end as we were going into Savasana she said to 'soften your boundaries into your melting heart' immediately a beautiful image of my heart turning to pure melted gold appeared in my mind. my heart spread and warmed and glowed in the room. then i saw as if the heart was made from hard solid gold then again melted into molten gold spreading through the space. it was SO beautiful and warm and vibrant. what a fabulous image. and briefly i got the sensation of floating on my yoga mat as if it was a leaf floating to the ground. i've been distracted lately and had trouble really going deep to savasana, being open to these images was a definite treat.

Themes

Recently i've been really wanting to use Heart-Centered themes in my classes. mainly because it is actually a lot easier to teach from a theme than just to float out there with nothing to anchor your class to. working with a theme brings my instructions back to a mid-point rather than letting them fly out of me totally unorganized and unrelated. so i put it out there to a group of friends who were gathered at my house. and this group has some universe mojo working because big things always come out of meeting with these folks.

so in the last two weeks, after meeting with them, my themes have come really really easily and beautifully. AND my classes have had more people in them and it seems they actually buy in to the themes and therefore into my instructions more.

two weeks ago i worked on Courage as the theme. and we worked with Warrior III and Handstand at the wall and with a partner. and it really hit home for some students, i could tell.

this week we worked on Playfulness (got to get softer after that hard work in Courage week) and we did binding and some crazy arm balancing. but what i think helped was that i got them to work as partners too, which opens up the class a bit more and opens up the energy.

So thank goodness that seems to flow at the moment. i'll have to keep it going even in classes where it isn't quite as easy for me to feel comfortable working from a theme. i still feel totally disorganized in how i present the alignment material, if i would just go in order of the 5 principles i'd be FINE I know it, but i never remember to do that. but oh well. eventually i'll improve and for now at least the students have something in the theme they can attach to.

Voicelessness

i have almost totally lost my voice. sort of. my best friend called on the phone earlier and we hadn't spoken in a few days. she immediately said :"what's wrong" and i have to work hard to reassure people i'm really ok, i feel totally fine, i just can't really speak properly at the moment.

apparently i have 'the cough.' someone at the gym where i work called it 'the 50 day cough' but i'm refusing to let it stick around that long. i mean, really, i do yoga, surely that will take care of it. honestly i'm surprised i caught it at all.

but the cough has made teaching an interesting task this week. i've kept warm water at hand whenever possible but i've found that the moment i am explaining something in intimate detail and with emphasis my voice kicks out and of course i'm miles from the water at the front of the room. it is an exercise in humility to be sure.

thus far students have been quite gracious as their instructions fade in and out due to the unpredictable nature of my vocal cords, but i don't know how long they'll last if this thing hangs on for 50 days!

Immersion 2 Lunchtime Sunday

Yogini's Journal: FEAR is such a huge emotion. What a motivator and a STOPPER. it puts the brakes on so fast ... even when the body is able, if the mind is fearful, WHEW! Today Moses had us practice handstand in the middle of the room with a friend. A girl got very very fearful very fast and started to cry. But the great part was instead of running away or trying to hide she came right up to Moses and said "i need help" I think that took exceptional courage. And he helped her and they worked together. So it worked out OK.
I guess i forget how scary handstand can be. And actually i don't ever remember being truly aware of being afraid of handstand. I know i was. And i definitely get afraid of headstand off the wall and of Bakasana.

Fear is such a tricky demon. You think you master on part and it turns out it is only waiting deeper inside to reveal itself again. Why is getting to know oneself and all the beauty that IS the individual so incredibly scary and even painful? Why are we so afraid of 'what we might find' in there? Really, we're going to find the GOOD, the BEAUTIFUL the LOVE that is at our core. unfortunately its usually covered up by lots of hurts and anxieties, and those are what we are fearful of. But if we accept that underneath we'll eventually find all those fabulous qualities then all those other things don't matter so much.

and of course there is always the unknown... so i have to just trust the universe to take care of what needs to be cared for and go on from there.

Immersion 2 Sunday Morning

Yogini's Journal: " Yesterday's practice was only standing poses. Not even a sun salutation to the belly! Lunge and pose, some Down Dog/uttanasana/Tadasana then parsvottanasana, trikonasana, 1/2 moon, parsvakonasana, revolved 1/2 moon, revolved parsva, revolved trikonasana then eagle legs twist and savansana. We went to 1/2 moon and revolved 1/2 moon from standing split... hard! major work in the pelvic focal point and drawing up muscular energy. A tough practice because we really held the poses for a long time. I didn't eat quite right either.. i kept getting flushed and lightheaded.

SO i'm trying to open up to this experience, but i have some sort of block.... Am I being a know it all? somehow i'm in my own way of falling deeply, madly in love with this process. It isn't the same as during the last teacher training when i was completely enraptured. But maybe that is the difference. This is an immersion, not a teacher training. I'm also finding it a little difficult to work with two different teachers. I wish they were working together instead of splitting the weekends between them.

On a whole i enjoy Moses' style. He's humorous but it feels like he is grounded in a deep spiritual practice. HE also gives more advice and directions for what to do to do good.... like carpool, vote democratic, drive as little as possible, etc. That can be inspiring. I want to be able and feel empowered to help my students live more fulfilled lives and sometimes that may include giving advice towards change.

During the last weekend one of the participants was saying she feels so good after yoga class. it makes her a different person and she wishes she could be that person all the time instead of who she often is. And i said, you ARE that person all the time, it's just covered up sometimes. And i said it not to give advice or create change for her, but because that's how i really think. the 'after yoga me' is the REAL me. She said "that's a good way to look at it" and i realized i may have crossed a line into more of a teacher counselor role. and that has stuck with me. i question myself "was that the right thing to do or say?" but now i'm thinking 'sure' we're here to learn from each other as much as from Kate and Moses. And that is what i want to be able to do with my students, to inspire and help them along the path without pushing or forcing -- just organically. It really popped right out of my mouth before i had a moment to think - so maybe she really did need to hear it. who knows.