The Truth About Yoga Teachers

After extensive market research (read: I emailed some fellow teachers), my suspicions have been confirmed that many people think yoga teachers are at least one, if not all, of the following:

a)     Insanely flexible

b)    Entirely without worldly interests

c)     A replacement for their parents/husband/girlfriend

d)    Actually God

Said people are thus either hugely shocked or completely put out upon discovering that one or all of these things may not be true.

So let’s take a little time here and discuss, shall we?

a) If you teach yoga, you must be insanely flexible OR I can’t do yoga, because I’m not flexible.

Certainly, some people can put their feet behind their head. Yours truly can, on a good day and an empty stomach. But I know an excellent teacher in New York who has a metal rod holding her spine together, which limits certain poses from happening on her body. When I went in for hip surgery two years ago, I had no idea of what my practice would look like afterwards. I heard tons of stories of ‘impaired’ teachers: blind, in a wheelchair, and so on. The bottom line is that teachers are also students, and as such we too are on a journey with our bodies, our minds and our souls. We are all working at our own razor’s edge, playing at that point where we’re challenged, and that challenge is going to be different for each of us. But what matters most in any practice is that we are consistently dancing on that edge.

One of my first yoga teachers, David Life, told a great story about taking a private lesson with the late, great Sri K. Pattabhi Jois. He described it as 3 hours of sweating, body-twisting, ego-driven effort to impress his teacher with his abilities, which left him collapsed in a puddle on the floor. Pattabhi Jois simply looked down at his sweaty, exhausted student and said, “You’re doing it wrong.”

There are arenas for pure physical accomplishment, but yoga isn’t one of them. What matters in yoga, for students and teachers alike, is the attitude we bring. What keeps you going to a certain class? Are you trying to impress a teacher, or another student? Are you only impressed with a teacher because of what they can do with their body (or what that body looks like)? Or can you find your private space while tapping into that group energy and come to your razor’s edge, as it varies from day to day, and allow your teacher to do the same?

b) If you teach yoga, you live a lifestyle that is free of worldly interests (preferably in a cave, on a mountainside, eating gruel).

As one of my polled teachers said, “I don't see why any interests I have, have to be mutually exclusive - it’s ALL yoga!!”

Indeed it is. Some students enjoy that we are humans, with human desires, interests and passions that extend beyond the practice of yoga. For other students, this somehow becomes a traitorous act: our sole purpose is to represent a pious lifestyle that reflects a pious soul. But we are neither monks nor nuns; and as I have found with my own teachers, when I project some sort of expectation onto another human being, more often than not I will end up disappointed. My projection says more about me than it does the other person.

What makes an act, a practice, and a lifestyle yogic is not its content; rather, it is the manner in which that act or practice is done. We’ve already seen how yoga without correct attitude is gymnastics; conversely, “non-yogic” activities can take on that yogic quality of witnessing and awareness and thus be transformed into a yogic practice.  With a focus on staying present and in the moment, gardening can be yogic, as can drinking coffee, pole-dancing, headbanging, or having sex.

Another teacher reminded me of the quote from Swami Satchidananda: “a yogi in any job, even a butcher, is better than a non-yogi.”

c) My yoga teacher is my new boyfriend/girlfriend/mom/dad.

I want to be extremely clear here: our work as yoga teachers takes us into many realms of relationship with our students, as a means of assisting their deepening self-knowledge and self-awareness. Because of this, sometimes the work we do will resemble that of a psychotherapist, or a confidant, or a physical therapist. We will inevitably develop relationships with students that we work with for a long time. This is not inappropriate: in fact, quite the opposite, as we are then able to support our students’ growth, remind them of their progress, and adjust our teaching to continue their development.

But while we are doing all of these things, we are at work. Although we might also develop an attachment to you, aiding you in your progress is our job. Healthy boundaries on both sides are appropriate and necessary so we can continue to do our best. Please do not tell us in front of a whole classroom of people that you are in love with us (true story), because not only is it extremely uncomfortable, chances are you really aren’t. When someone helps you get out of pain, it can be easy to ascribe that relief as coming from the other person. It might follow in your mind that this person understands you better than the disappointments that are your family or partner. You feel that they’re made for you.

The thing is though, you probably don’t really know them that well. You see them every week in class, and that repetition creates a familiarity. Maybe they even tell stories from their own life to illustrate a teaching, and to generate a relaxed classroom setting. Sometimes they put their hands on your body, which has a certain intimacy to it and should be done with care (but that’s a whole separate blog post).

There are specific instances of teachers and students falling in love, but they are the exception, not the norm, and the feelings in these exceptions have always gone both ways.

On the whole, we can be your friend, or shoulder to cry on, and we do want you to feel that you can open up to us and ask questions, or talk about challenges you’re having. But expecting more than the kind of relationship you would have with any teacher or therapist will set you up for disillusionment upon discovering d) below.

d) My yoga teacher is so spiritual, I think they’re actually God.

Sharon Gannon used to talk about this all the time and debunk the ‘spiritual’ label. She’d talk about how ridiculous it is to claim that one person is more spiritual than any other. “Are we not all spiritual beings,” she’d say, “because we are animated by spirit?”

Yoga teachers may be spending more time than other people studying the body-mind-spirit continuum, practicing asana, meditating and the like. But we are also people. We get angry, we swear, we make mistakes, we screw up. We get distracted. We rear-end you while driving (my bad). We forget things. We say things we don’t mean.

If we set up our teacher to be beyond the sway of human emotions, it is only going to be a disappointment if we see them yelling at somebody. If we think that just because they spend their class time drawing upon the greatest wisdom available to them, that there’s never a moment when they’re unwise, then we are the fools. We are all, teachers and students alike, doing our best in every moment, whether or not it’s the absolute best that could be done. If we’re working on bringing more compassion into our lives, wouldn’t a good place to start be with our teachers?

The bottom line is, folks, we’re people too. We’re working on ourselves just like you are. We may have been doing it a little longer, but we’re still on that same path as everyone else. Recognize that we are not in some separate category, but that we’re in many ways just like you.  And then reach out for our hand and let us do what we do best.