Think yoga educators have everything found out? Think again. While particular aspects of yoga could end up being simpler for teachers, other difficulties can occur, such as self-imposed expectations about exactly what it means to be an educator. Identification with the teacher status can impact how teachers appear in courses as a student, specifically when they perceive themselves being experienced or evaluated by others.
About a year earlier, I streamed into my most lined up, intense variation of Virabhadrasana II (Warrior II Posture), hypervigilant to the fellow trainer"s watchful eyes as she scanned the room for the next person to adjust. She understood I was a teacher and so did the other students, I was afraid receiving a change or correction may weaken my reliability and deliver a significant swelling to my ego. Would students still respect me if I were openly remedied? In spite of the trainer"s hints to modify and reduce the strength of poses in favor of self-care-- messages I shared in my own courses-- I had a hard time extremely to do so, salarying war with my ego and implied beliefs that my self-respect was somehow tied into others" perceptions of my asana.
Assuming the duty of an instructor typically recommends to others that you must have some things determined. Yet yoga is an ever-evolving, iterative procedure that involves continuously interrogating one"s experience, recognizing one"s restrictions and accepting the flaws fundamental in being human. Take, for example, my years-long resistance to formal meditation, believing the "meditation in motion" of my asana practice to be sufficient. I have actually since discovered that strong recognition with the abilities and limitations of the physical body can limit access to the deeper knowledge, understanding and compassion helped with by meditative practices.
In developing a more standard meditation practice, we gain important insight into otherwise subconscious patterns that may not be seen during our yoga streams-- and in life. Loving-kindness (metta) meditation in particular can re-train our relationship to the ego and present moment, assisting us to express more self-compassion when the ego unavoidably asserts or threatens to dictate our actions. This is aptly illustrated by my experience in a yoga class following my first metta retreat. Doing not have push or stress, I tenderly nourished my body throughout the practice, relinquishing my ego"s battle for supremacy and resting in the sweet awareness that, in being totally typical and human, I was more than enough, advanced asana or not.
As teachers, embodying self-care through modifications and avoiding revealing the optimum of every posture (unless it"s truly called for in the energy of the moment)-- can be the greatest gift to ourselves, other students and fellow instructors. The "myth of sophisticated asana" is damaging and may influence even instructors who uphold the eight-limbed course and see asana as however one small piece of the whole. This could partially be associateded with yoga"s common equation with sophisticated gymnastic asana in popular culture and lots of contemporary yoga courses. For myself, after years of implicit buy-in, engagement in extensive meditative practices broke my identification with this misconception and grew 2 aspects of "innovative" yoga practice: Masterfully illuminating the ego"s defenses as opposed to permitting them to unconsciously manage the reins, while attuning to the heart as a source of guidance.
If you"re a teacher, how has your yoga practice been affected given that you started instructing? If you"re a student, what words of knowledge would you provide to your instructors?
A Yoga Teacher"s Practice: What We"re Still Learning
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