Volume 1 Issue 1

January, 2004

Why

 I Teach

Yoga

Study Guide

Remain vigilant of your ground in each pose.

My body is not in one piece, as each and every joint has its own freedom.  Only I know what freedom is.  Because my body is in pieces, so my mind is free.  For the average person their body is in one piece so their mind is in in pieces.

- B.K.S. Iyengar

“Ultimate Freedom”

[If you] have a sincere desire to make [your] life miserable, [you] might learn to compare [yourself] to other people.

- Dan Greenberg

How to Make Yourself Miserable

“Why am I here?” 

“What is my purpose in this place?” 

“There must be a reason.”

You guessed it, I’m standing in my laundry room, trying my utmost to remember why.  This happens too often.  When I tell friends, they nod and laugh out loud.  If the friend is over 40, I was going to say 50 but it seems that this type of incident is occurring in younger and younger folks these days, they will tell me their latest or funniest story of the same genre. 

I have been wondering if this type of brain burp is behind the soul searching associated with maturation.  I now know that once I head to the laundry room ((I say laundry room because most of the time when I am standing, dazed and confused, it is in the laundry room—this could be happening just as often in other rooms, but the other rooms are so much more entertaining that perhaps I don’t notice so much) I must make a great effort to keep my mind on my intention.  It is a great practice in mindfulness.  It is a practice of how to move through this world with serene attention.  While keeping focus on the bigger picture I still must notice the details around me.  I don’t want to walk to the laundry room and pass Zonk, the cat, without giving him a stroke or, God forbid, not give a cookie to Thelma and Louise, the good dogs in residence.  I don’t want to walk with blinders, goal-oriented, to the laundry room.  Instead, I must have a firm resolve, an intention.  I must keep my intention always accessible, but still notice the dust and beauty of my own home. 

Similarly, as I look out at the teeming mass of 2 eager faces waiting patiently for class to begin I have been asking myself, “Why am I here?”  “What is my purpose in this place?”  “There must be a reason.”

When I write a check for a membership to this or that professional association I ask myself the same questions.

When I write a check for even more continuing education I ask again.

When I am on my mat and having trouble with a posture that a few years ago was so much easier I ask myself, yep, “Why?  What?  How in the world?”

There are answers to these questions, way too many, some so much more sublime than those to my query in the laundry room.  It is my calling, my service, my honor.  In Zen meditation the answers to questions are again and again “Not that.”  To truly know my motivation I delved back to the beginning.  Why did I begin teaching in the first place?  And are the reasons I began teaching still relevant?  Yes and no.

When I first began teaching yoga I did so because there wasn’t a teacher in my area.  If I can’t find a teacher, “I’ll be the teacher,” I thought.  I taught older adults at a Senior Citizens Center a course  taught by the Light of Yoga Society.  I learned so much from that course and from my students that it quickly became obvious to me that teaching was a truly remarkable teacher.  I was hooked.  Now there is no lacking in teachers.  Even in Fayetteville you can find scores of yoga teachers and yoga styles.  I teach because I am still hooked on teaching.  It teaches me as well as those who come to my class.

I don’t teach for fame, money or glory.  Good thing, since they are not forthcoming.    Besides, attachment to outcomes leads to a particularly vehement form of misery.  One of my mentors, Judith Lasater,  says all you need to identify yourself as a teacher is a student.  If you have a student, you’re a teacher.  While that is a wonderful approach when the students are present, what are you when the students are not in attendance?  And, believe me, that has happened.  The itinerant soul that I am, moving from place to place, I have often had to beg people to just try my class.  Really, try it, there may be a benefit for you.  How can I label myself as yoga teacher when there are no students?  (When a tree falls in the forest, if  no one is there to hear, does it make a sound?)  As insecure as my yoga teacher status is, why do I continue to teach?  In the times when I look at my teaching through the practical eyes of a business woman, rather than become upset on the lack of success I can take heart knowing that there was a time when a genius like B.K.S. Iyengar had only one student.

I teach because I am committed to teaching.  I enjoy the interaction.  I enjoy the insights, whether my own or those shared with me by students.  I enjoy the process.  I never tire of the education I receive from practice, study and teaching. 

I have been committed to yoga for nearly 30 years.  Yoga is built upon the foundation of abhyasa and varaigyam, discipline and surrender.  I have had the discipline over these years, but,  have found the greatest difficulty is not discipline, it’s letting go; letting go of judgment and expectation; letting go of appearances.  I teach because it has brought beauty and joy to my life.  It has not, and will not, bring me fame or fortune.  It brings me purpose, love, insight, fulfillment, and perpetual study.  It is a practice.  It is never complete, and in that regard it is a statement of all I want my life to be:  an open book whose pages are written each and every day.

And, who knows, its discipline may help me remember why I walk into the laundry room.

[Return to TOP]

Stand on Your Own Two Feet

I am standing on my own altar and my poses are my prayers.

- B.K.S. Iyengar

In order to do yoga we need gravity.  Gravity is the force that allows us to work.  With each posture we examine and discover how each body part resists the pull of gravity and gains a sensation of lightness.  Our relationship with gravity begins with the body part that is connected to the earth—our ground.  In standing postures that is the sole of the foot.  Regardless of whether we are standing on one foot, two feet together, or two feet apart, we must examine how the foot connects with and uses gravity.  Spreading the toes actually spreads the sole of the foot (Fig. 1).  Extend the foot by extending the mounds of the toes forward away from the heel (Fig. 2).  Press into the four tires of the foot evenly (Fig. 3) and note how that activates the calf and thigh muscles to lift the leg bones which support the trunk.  Can you keep this Tadasana foot in any standing posture?

[Return to TOP]

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

- Marianne Williamson

[Return to TOP]

[Return to Perpetual Motion]