I Am A Yoga Teacher

What does a yoga teacher do, and why do I want to be one?

I’m embarrassed to say that I gave the question very little thought prior to signing up for teacher training.  The answer I gave to the public was that I had practiced yoga for so many years that I was curious about teaching and deepening my own practice.  In one of my more honest moments, you probably could have gotten me to admit that I harbor dreams of owning a studio or otherwise making my way as a full-time teacher at some point.

Neither my public nor my private answer do much more than beg the question.  Yeah, I practice yoga a lot, but why?  I want to do and teach yoga all the time, but why?

A couple weeks ago, the Cleveland Yoga Teacher Trainees Class of 2013 were seriously lagging in energy.  Fearless Leader responded exactly as one would expect: by teaching a spur of the moment two hour inversion workshop.  Fearless Leader thinks nothing cures a case of tired faster than more, bigger, harder.  That Saturday, she was right.  All that blood and adrenaline rushing to our heads got us buzzing and moving and feeling alive once again.

We assisted one another, and I was paired with my friend Nicole.  We rocked our way through various pincha assists, before we moved on to handstand.  Nicole used my assist to kick up.  I walked her leg over her hips and told her to look at her belly, and VOILA!  For about five seconds, Nicole was in the best looking handstand you could imagine.  Her feet and her hands were in one line.  Her feet were flexed.  I knew she was in the pose because I could feel the point where her alignment allowed her to try less.  She got lighter.  When she came down, she popped right off the ground and, with the purest expression of joy I have seen in the longest time, immediately gave my sweaty ass the biggest hug.

And I learned why I wanted to be a yoga teacher.

After all the teaching I’ve done in my various roles, I am surprised at how much the bullshit teacher/student hierarchical narrative influences the way I view things, including yoga.  Now that I’ve finished teacher training, I can confirm that yoga teachers are not on a different plane than the rest of us.  A yoga teacher is just someone whose life has been touched by something pure and wonderful and perfect and who dreams that s/he might learn enough to share that feeling.

As I sit here on the first weekend of the rest of my life, I'm a little heartbroken that teacher training is over.  My PASC peeps will know what I mean when I say that I never thought I'd be in a color group again, but that's what this was.  A group with nothing in common but a fierce devotion to one perfect thing came together, and their shared love of that one perfect thing bonded them forever, if only in their minds.  With the program over, I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel the loss.

That said, more than anything else, I'm ready to try to share what little I know in the hopes that someone else finds this practice and this practice elevates them as it has elevated me.  Really, all a yoga teacher needs to do is get out of the way and let the practitioner and practice bond, stepping in only when the practitioner waivers to nudge them back on the path.  That's it.  As long as I remember that I am not the star but a passenger in the backseat who can read the directions and point out the right place to turn, I have a chance of being a halfway decent yoga teacher.

Thanks, Nicole.  Thanks, TTs.