15 September 2023 · Yoga

What teaching yoga teaches me

Nothing is personal.

A smile, a frown, a yawn, a sigh of relief, a grunt of pain – nothing is personal. Every yogi is going through their own stuff. A stiff body, a foggy mind, a recently-broken heart: all of it affects a practice and someone’s enthusiasm for it. I can view a person’s reactions as a result of me and my teaching, or I can let them appear and float past, without holding, without attaching any meaning to them.

Take someone who packs up and leaves swiftly, without a goodbye or thank you – does that mean they didn’t like the class? More probably, their life beckons, and I don’t know the details. It could be late to work. It could be shyness. It could be sadness. It could be, of course, that they didn’t like the class. And if that’s the case? Well, that leads me to my next point…

I can’t please everyone.

I can try my best to be kind, patient, and fill up my heart before I teach, and still, there’ll be people who don’t take to my energy. I’m just not their cup of tea. It’s impossible to please everyone – bodies are built differently and so desire different paces and poses; energies wax and wane depending on the time of day and what someone ate for lunch; consciousness flowers at different stages of life in different souls.

Not pleasing everyone, this is a challenge for me. Like many in our culture, I grew up making everyone happy. I felt I needed a grin, a pat on the back, a “you did good” as an antidote to my feeling of not-enoughness. As an adult, I’m working on disentangling my concept of self from the opinions of others, both positive and negative.

Well, thank god for yoga teaching. Almost daily, I’m invited to weaken my sensitivity to what others say and do. Where else would I get the opportunity to offer, to several people in one hit, the rawest and deepest parts of myself, and have that offer (supposedly in my eyes) accepted or rejected, and still be okay?

Imperfect is perfect.

Counter-intuitively, or maybe very much intuitively, people seem drawn to imperfection, seeing it as real. And fun! I’ve watched my less-than-perfect teaching invite others to relax. When I rephrase a cue, lose balance and fall out of a pose, laugh and say “wait a minute, are we doing the same side again?”, I’m showing my humanity, and people join in. They giggle when they lose balance; they cry when they release an open hip.

Even if ‘perfect’ were to exist - and I’m coming to learn it simply does not - when it’s attempted in the yoga room, it feels off. Yogis are attuned. They pick up on robotic precision and the stiffness of sticking-to-the-plan energy.

I’m allowed to feel down.

Like all humans, I travel the peaks and valleys of emotional life. What seems to set me on a unique path in our society is my commitment to letting myself feel. I’m no expert at this, but these days, if I’m anxious, irritated, overwhelmed, or blue, I’ll at least try and let the emotion arrive and settle. It can stay and move through me. That includes when I’m in the middle of teaching.

Despite any advice against it, I let people in the room in on it. I’ll share a mood, a thought pattern, my off-ness or down-ness. Sometimes I run the risk of oversharing. Sometimes I feel it’d be better for my ‘image’ to just put on a brave face.

But do you know what’s better than a 100%-of-the-time centred, stable, and balanced yoga teacher? An imbalanced but aware one, quiet, honest, allowing a challenging emotion to complete its cycle. Which brings me to my end point…

All of it changes.

Some days I feel like teaching, other days I don’t. Some days I have all the love to give four-dozen people, other days I can’t bear to be looked at by a stranger. The dawn of 6 am is brighter today. The air is icier this evening. My muscles feel stiff. My joints feel loose. Students come and go. Studios open and close.

All of it changes.

Back to blog | Next post >