On Teaching

I took a year off from teaching yoga.

I was in school full-time (recently finished and love the sweet taste of freedom) and knew that it was either my personal practice or teaching that had to go...and personal practice won out. But in the time between actually teaching and now, I've been doing quite a bit of thinking in regards to what makes a good yoga teacher.










And while I can't help but watch this video over and over and laugh my face off, it really highlights for me how easy it is to be a terrifyingly awful yoga teacher. Maybe it is because it is too easy these days to become a teacher of yoga, maybe it is because there are just so many students hungry for yoga that they will take to anyone willing to share some poses with them, or maybe we just don't know what a good teacher is and because of that lack of modeling, have no idea how to blossom into something incredible ourselves.

In my job I get to read projects from new yoga teachers and am able to have some great conversations about what it means to become a yoga teacher (quite possibly the best job in the world). I read quite often the comment (or a variation of the comment): "I was resisting getting adjusted because I am a yoga teacher and I should be doing it right", which always makes me wonder...

What is it about being teacher implies that we are no longer a student?

What is it about being a teacher that suggests we actually know what we are doing?

What is it about being a teacher that feeds our own egos in this practice?

One of my favourite people, who runs a yoga studio in Uptown Toronto, commented on the number of students new to Ashtanga who call in to the studio saying "I'm really advanced and am worried that this practice is too easy...should I still come?" - something about this makes me wonder: do truly advanced students / teachers think of themselves as advanced? Who was it that said it is the wise man that knows he's the fool and the fool who thinks he's a wise man...

Maybe I'll never go back to teaching and maybe I will - but I know that I am always a student first and am a complete and utter fool about most things.