What is Yoga, 05/25

Yoga gives us the space, time, and tools to get to know ourselves better. We don’t get to know ourselves better by gazing in the mirror, but by gazing within.

“Why aren’t you teaching yoga Marta?”

Eye roll, fidget with hair, look away from the camera…

“Well, I can’t do Lotus Pose. And I struggle with Handstands.”

Whoa. Really? Do you think you have to be able to do all poses in order to teach them?

I was honestly taken aback. Marta is my amazing contact at Passion.io. We meet every month, her in Spain or one time Bali; and me in Huntsville. She has her 200 hour training but instead of teaching, she coaches people like me on making a good app. She is absolutely gorgeous, athletic, and someone that anyone in their right mind would want to be around. I adore her.

I have never seen her arrogant but I had never seen her so small before this conversation. All of her confidence and radiance vanished.

My response to her went something like this:

1. There is no such thing as being ‘unable’ to do a pose. When you visualize a pose, you are already in it.

2. Struggling with enacting a pose is some of the best learning we can do.

3. That struggle makes you more relatable and therefore someone that more people want to connect with. Your struggle makes you a better teacher and, I would argue, more of a magnet for people to work with.

I realize that there are teachers who are appealing because they can do the really hard acrobatic kinds of poses. I am not trying to deny that.

But being an ancient 55 year old and nearly 30 years in the business, I can tell you that people will stick with you when they feel like they belong with you. And most of us feel a sense of belonging, not through striving to become, but seeing an appealing and evolved version of what we already are.

Wait, are you asking me to stop striving allie?

No, I am not suggesting that you stop striving. We are born to evolve and strive. We come into a body in order to feel, experience, fall down, and get up again! Go! Strive! Do the absolute best you can do. And take notes along the way, not necessarily of your successes but the things that caught you up and nearly took you down. Those

are the gold!

Your humanity is your secret sauce.

I have never felt confident in my physicality. I am not really coordinated. Jumping jacks are my nemesis and always have been. I don’t know why I find it so hard to sync arms and legs but I really do. The last time I participated in an aerobics class, I started out surrounded by people. As class went on and my coordination evaporated, I noticed fewer people near me. Really. It was hilarious! The joke of my family is that I who HATED the obligatory Jane Fonda workout on the dock, is now teaching something physical. Who would have guessed?

The truth is that I’m okay with that but it has taken some time to get here. Would I like to be more slender in my yoga pants? Sure! But I know that I won’t be the one balancing on one hand.

I will however be able to talk you through how to get into nearly any pose, regardless of the difficulty. I just can’t necessarily show you. Does that take away from my teaching? I don’t think so. I am not actually an advocate for demonstrating, particularly for the really hard and risky poses. Even if you can do them, it might not be advisable to demonstrate them.

Should we demonstrate?

Short answer, sure, sometimes. However, I avoid demonstrating for a variety of reasons.

1. If you are teaching well, you should not be as warmed up as your clients because you have been watching them as opposed to doing the practice with them. Typically we would demonstrate the harder poses that occur after warmup, which means you are whipping yourself into Bakasana with cold tissues. Hello injury!

2. What if it isn’t Bakasana but something lopsided like Eagle or ½ Moon? Well, isn’t one side of your body going to be experiencing the pose but not the other? So, now you are lopsided. I often demonstrate Thread the Needle because it's confusing to be upside down and twisted. I demonstrate particularly if we are going to do something extra while there. But, I only demonstrate with my right arm threading through. So my left side has had fewer moments in this pose. I am lopsided, and as such, more prone to injury.

3. Typically a demonstration will be a AAA version of the pose because we want people to see the best execution. Are you coming into that deepest, most excellent version while breathing and staying close to yourself? No. Your focus will be on the appearance of the pose as opposed to your own safety. Injury.

4. Lastly, I’ve been doing yoga for longer than a lot of my clients. My body therefore understands the poses better than they do. As I said before, I don’t feel like I have some kind of physical prowess, but my postures might be deeper than a newbie. Is that depth going to inspire or deter? Either is possible. I might create aspiration in one person but defeat (I can never do that) in another. I knew a teacher in Toronto who used to pick out the pretty women in each class and bring everyone over to see how well she did the pose. Vomit. There were so many issues with that dude so I’ll just leave that where it lies.

The big message I want you to hear is that demonstrating is hard on your body and not often necessary to teach well. Better teaching will come as you step off your mat and watch your students so you can adjust your lesson plan according to what you are seeing. Better still, get assisting people. Assisting is so powerful for moving through trauma and disassociation. It is a superhero kind of skill.

But shouldn’t I present an ‘ideal?’

There has always been a narcissistic edge to yoga in the West, a ‘look at me’ sinkhole. I get it, but I don’t think it belongs in the true path of yoga.

Yoga gives us the space, time, and tools to get to know ourselves better. We don’t get to know ourselves better by gazing in the mirror, but by gazing within. There is a huge difference. The mirror or the selfie pose striker might be how you first get into yoga, but let’s encourage that to be only the first step of many. The many steps after include the inner work that we are all born to do.

Framed in this way, you still know you can teach when you aren't in peak shape (yes those days will exist). You can teach while pregnant (right Lucy?), in a cast, going through chemo, or simply living in an ageing body (ask me about menopause).

Your skills are not dependent on your physical abilities but on your ability to communicate and relate. Your clients are with you for your mind, not your body...

Kate said that a comment I made really got her. It was something like “you are not going to create everlasting peace today.” I went on to say that you are, however, going to create peace in this moment and that means something.

If we chase the ideal, the reflection in Narcissus’ pool, we will never create peace in this moment nor any that follow. It is a hollow sinkhole.

If we can embrace that this moment is enough and we are enough in it, the hole fills in. The tools that yoga offers enable us to be present in our moments, easy or hard. The best of yoga shows us how to fill the holes, not create them.

To be truly present requires us to trust the decisions that brought us to this moment. We can neither fear the future nor rue the past if we are truly being present. In our practice of santosha or contentment, we learn how to do that.

No one can authentically be in this moment without working with the light and the shadows within. Plus, are you only present in the good times? How do you show up when things aren't so good?

Most of my coaching clients will start with an avoidance of their dark spaces. We are working toward their greatest power as a teacher and so why would we want to talk about the insecurities, traumas, and crashes?

There are a few reasons why:

1. I bet yoga helped you through these times, which means that this makes you know how powerful this practice is. Isn’t that helpful for your marketing and your content?

2. Everyone wants to know that they are going to get through their hard time. You can be the beacon that says “I get it. You’ll get there.”

3. You are going to have more really hard shit happen. You may as well see it for what it is. If you prepare for it, by understanding how strong you’ve become, the ride can be a bit easier.

But here is the primordial reason we need to explore our less than ideal moments: they are the reason that you are where you are. Your soul signed on to this life to learn big lessons. You are in this body because you were needed here in a state of transformation and evolution. Your growth grows the planet. Most of us don’t learn from joy. We learn from falling down. So, your soul says, time to fall. You must fall and bruise and then heal before you can really be the light that the world needs.

When your clients see you navigate this, they belong in your orbit. You give them the permission and ability to also get back up and to use yoga to do so. This is what gives you the grit for others to connect and attach to you.

People may be drawn to gloss, but they won’t trust it for long. People trust the glow that shines with the grit.

In the end, we teach yoga to show others how to live more fulfilling lives. Whether it is overcoming difficulty in Downward Dog or remembering to breathe to get through a panic attack, this is a power-filled practice. And the world needs its complexity now.

Don’t narrow the practice to the selfie or the mirror. Let it be big and full of mystery, like you are. If you can’t think of a pose, make one up from your own stiffness or heartache. It might be your student’s favourite ever pose.

This morning someone with eyes full of despair held my forearm and asked “is it just me?” If I was living the image, I might have answered differently, but instead I let my eyes match hers and said “no, it is not just you. We are all feeling it.”

This is why people tell me that I was speaking only to them! I speak about the pulls inside of me and inevitably those pulls are shared by my people. They resonate and so we all resonate. But I am still standing there teaching them. I haven’t fallen apart but I’m sharing how I could have if it weren’t for my practice. Just like them, I find the mat and it helps me to be stronger and more myself. Together, we find ourselves and each other.

We find our resonance, our harmonic, our OM. And it is perfect.