I opened this week’s issue of Newsweek after a conversation with my mother. She had asked if I read it yet and what my thoughts were. The article is titled “Bow Down to the Yoga Teacher”. It’s about the relationship between yoga teachers, their students and their egos. And it makes me angry.
Not angry at Newsweek, or the author Casey Schwartz, but angry at these teachers of yoga. In the article Schwartz writes “Do yoga, transcend your ego and discover your inner humility- at least that’s the idea behind this ancient spiritual practice” and then goes on to rail against the “celebrity teachers’ who are so ego driven they have lost the reasons behind why we practice yoga in the first place.
The western practice of yoga has come under fire in the last ten years or so (probably longer but I was peacefully unaware). In the east yoga is a much more spiritual practice. It isn’t the tool for fitness that we most often see here. I’ve experienced spiritual awakenings through yoga and I’ve also seen the physical changes that it has brought to my body so I guess I fall somewhere in the middle of the why-to-do-yoga spectrum. I don’t see the harm in using yoga to achieve physical fitness as some of my colleagues do. I think that anything that gets people off the couch and in their bodies is worthwhile. If you are attending yoga classes simply to complement your weight training or cardio work-out, SUPER. At least you are doing yoga. Maybe you won’t meet your true self or access your inner energy, but you’re being active. You are lowering your stress level, you are building strength and flexibility, you are gaining all the health benefits that yoga brings.
Yoga is more accessible now than it has ever been. Yoga is everywhere. We no longer need to seek out gurus so that they may deem us worthy of their wisdom because yoga is almost on as many street corners as Starbucks. There are so many varieties of yoga it can make it hard to choose where to go to a class when we’ve decided that we want to go to a class. Keeping in mind that all teachers are not created equal, we also need to keep trying until we find the teacher that is right for us. It shouldn’t come down to who is the most famous as much as it comes down to who works best for you. I’m not suggesting that instructors who have been teaching for a lifetime shouldn’t be sought out and praised, or that they don’t have something to offer us, but they are still only human. Sometimes we build people up in our minds, putting them on pedestals. It can be disappointing when that pedestal crumbles.
The ‘celebrity’ teachers seem to have forgotten, as Schwartz puts it, “the fact that they were ever students themselves”. There is a yoga instructor in my community, who I greatly respect, who attended a class with a well-known teacher a year or so ago in Portland. It was an event. There were pre-requisites for the class, such as being able to be in unsupported headstand for 15 minutes. This is a teacher who my friend greatly admired. During the questions and answer period, my friend asked a question regarding a pose, which was apparently a mistake. The teacher verbally berated her in front of the entire class for wasting her time with such a trivial question. Huh? Isn’t that the point of teachers? To answer questions. I remember in middle school hearing a teacher state that there are no stupid questions. Talk about ego.
We do not come to yoga to be judged. We come to learn. We do not come to make our teachers feel good. We come to make ourselves feel good. Whatever one’s reason for practicing yoga, we should leave feeling better than we did when we arrived. That isn’t going to happen if our teachers think of themselves as gods. In the world of yoga instructors I am an infant. I know that there is a lot I have yet to learn. I know that I the longer I teach, the better the teacher I will be. I also that there is one thing I will carry with me through my career: my classes will be accessible to my students. I will not judge. I will not condemn. I will continuously check in with myself to be sure I am practicing my yamas and niyamas and not letting my ego take over. My classes will be places to ask questions and get answers. Maybe I won’t have your answer right away but I will find it for you or better yet, I will help you find it for yourself. I am not a “yoga diva” nor do I want to become one.
I think that articles like Schwartz’s are important because yoga students or potential yoga students need to know that yoga is for everyone. If teachers behave as deities, yoga loses its user-friendliness and people stop practicing. Of course the die-hards will still keep on but the rest of us will get left behind. Those of us who are out-of-shape, overweight couch potatoes will never try yoga. We will never find the life changing peace it can bring. We will never meet the muscles that have hidden dormant in our bodies. We will never stop and breathe. So don’t bow down to me. I am no one special. I don’t care if you are a vegetarian or can stand in headstand. I am a yoga teacher and I appreciate your stupid questions, so bring them on.
Not angry at Newsweek, or the author Casey Schwartz, but angry at these teachers of yoga. In the article Schwartz writes “Do yoga, transcend your ego and discover your inner humility- at least that’s the idea behind this ancient spiritual practice” and then goes on to rail against the “celebrity teachers’ who are so ego driven they have lost the reasons behind why we practice yoga in the first place.
The western practice of yoga has come under fire in the last ten years or so (probably longer but I was peacefully unaware). In the east yoga is a much more spiritual practice. It isn’t the tool for fitness that we most often see here. I’ve experienced spiritual awakenings through yoga and I’ve also seen the physical changes that it has brought to my body so I guess I fall somewhere in the middle of the why-to-do-yoga spectrum. I don’t see the harm in using yoga to achieve physical fitness as some of my colleagues do. I think that anything that gets people off the couch and in their bodies is worthwhile. If you are attending yoga classes simply to complement your weight training or cardio work-out, SUPER. At least you are doing yoga. Maybe you won’t meet your true self or access your inner energy, but you’re being active. You are lowering your stress level, you are building strength and flexibility, you are gaining all the health benefits that yoga brings.
Yoga is more accessible now than it has ever been. Yoga is everywhere. We no longer need to seek out gurus so that they may deem us worthy of their wisdom because yoga is almost on as many street corners as Starbucks. There are so many varieties of yoga it can make it hard to choose where to go to a class when we’ve decided that we want to go to a class. Keeping in mind that all teachers are not created equal, we also need to keep trying until we find the teacher that is right for us. It shouldn’t come down to who is the most famous as much as it comes down to who works best for you. I’m not suggesting that instructors who have been teaching for a lifetime shouldn’t be sought out and praised, or that they don’t have something to offer us, but they are still only human. Sometimes we build people up in our minds, putting them on pedestals. It can be disappointing when that pedestal crumbles.
The ‘celebrity’ teachers seem to have forgotten, as Schwartz puts it, “the fact that they were ever students themselves”. There is a yoga instructor in my community, who I greatly respect, who attended a class with a well-known teacher a year or so ago in Portland. It was an event. There were pre-requisites for the class, such as being able to be in unsupported headstand for 15 minutes. This is a teacher who my friend greatly admired. During the questions and answer period, my friend asked a question regarding a pose, which was apparently a mistake. The teacher verbally berated her in front of the entire class for wasting her time with such a trivial question. Huh? Isn’t that the point of teachers? To answer questions. I remember in middle school hearing a teacher state that there are no stupid questions. Talk about ego.
We do not come to yoga to be judged. We come to learn. We do not come to make our teachers feel good. We come to make ourselves feel good. Whatever one’s reason for practicing yoga, we should leave feeling better than we did when we arrived. That isn’t going to happen if our teachers think of themselves as gods. In the world of yoga instructors I am an infant. I know that there is a lot I have yet to learn. I know that I the longer I teach, the better the teacher I will be. I also that there is one thing I will carry with me through my career: my classes will be accessible to my students. I will not judge. I will not condemn. I will continuously check in with myself to be sure I am practicing my yamas and niyamas and not letting my ego take over. My classes will be places to ask questions and get answers. Maybe I won’t have your answer right away but I will find it for you or better yet, I will help you find it for yourself. I am not a “yoga diva” nor do I want to become one.
I think that articles like Schwartz’s are important because yoga students or potential yoga students need to know that yoga is for everyone. If teachers behave as deities, yoga loses its user-friendliness and people stop practicing. Of course the die-hards will still keep on but the rest of us will get left behind. Those of us who are out-of-shape, overweight couch potatoes will never try yoga. We will never find the life changing peace it can bring. We will never meet the muscles that have hidden dormant in our bodies. We will never stop and breathe. So don’t bow down to me. I am no one special. I don’t care if you are a vegetarian or can stand in headstand. I am a yoga teacher and I appreciate your stupid questions, so bring them on.
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