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.

Blocks

I want to move up, in the direction of my dreams and freedom and enlightenment and all of the good stuff.  But the day-to-day makes getting to a higher place so hard.  I can't think or write with a cold.  I can't think or write when I'm so tired.  I can't think or write with a 8 to 5 and teacher training and keeping up with the people I love and the five million other things that demand attention every day.

Part of the solution is to simplify, to do less.  I know this.  I need to clear off my plate that which does not serve me, and I am trying so hard to do so.  I think I'm at the point where I'm ready to start shedding layers, and I have full confidence that if I do so more opportunities that better serve me will appear.  I just need the courage to get started.  I need to jump, even if I can't see the landing spot, and trust that the universe will reciprocate my gesture of good faith, catch me, and lift me up.

Boy, it's hard to think on cold medicine.  Blergh.

Lessons in Humility: Yoga Teacher (In) Training

Before we left Florida this morning, Carolyn and I did yoga together.  I was sad and emotional about leaving, so I didn’t want to lead a class.  We just did whatever asanas we wanted for about 20 minutes.  Towards the end of our practice, she helped me stay up in pincha, and it felt wonderful.  Squeezing her arm between my legs allowed me to stay up longer away from the wall than I ever had before.  

Then she said she’d like to do headstand, a pose she’s worked on a bunch recently and has improved greatly.  To repay her assist, I offered to assist her.  I did a great job stabilizing her hips, but while I was admiring my handiwork and her headstand, I zoned out.  I wasn’t present.

2 seconds later, girlfriend falls on her back.  Eep.  

Pictured: NOT CAROLYN

Girlfriend is unhurt and cheerful about the whole thing, but boyfriend is a little embarrassed at the very basic lesson he apparently needed to learn.  Today’s lesson: if I am grumpy and not committed to teach, I will not teach, not even for one pose.  If I do commit to teach, then I must teach 100 percent, even if it’s “only” for one pose.  My students will count on me to be present for however long both of us have committed.  

Last weekend, I had coffee with the owner of the World’s Greatest Yoga Studio, and she advised that a yogi who teaches from a place of love, moderation, and humility will always remain in balance.  Lately I find that humility is very, very easy, because I continue to make mistakes when I teach, and those mistakes do not hesitate to manifest themselves in ways that touch other people.  All I can hope is that I learn my lessons.

Perfect

I feel like I have to be perfect, or everything I care about will be taken away from me.  It's only gotten worse since the REBUT, when it really was.

One of the unfortunate consequences of this feeling is that I put so much pressure on myself when I go after the things that I care about.  It's counterproductive, but it's what I do.  This pressure has probably gotten worse since the REBUT.  Then again, it's possible that, since the REBUT, I'm now going after things that I really, truly want for the first time ever.

And it's scary.  But I'm doing it.

Something I need to start doing again is writing here.  Lately I've saved all my best thoughts for teacher training, but the whole point is, one doesn't have to have a perfect thought to write.  I like writing, and someday I'd like to get paid to write about the kinds of things I write about here, now, for free.

So I'd better get back to getting the reps in.

For My Teachers

I teach my first public yoga class in 10 hours and 15 minutes.

I guess I'm nervous, but mostly I'm just excited.  I've heard people talk about, when they start doing something they knew they were always meant to do, they have a great sense of arriving.  That's exactly how I feel.  I feel like I should have been doing this all along.  I know I will mess up tonight and many, many times in the future, to the extent that "messing up" is even possible in yoga (and I don't think it is).  I know I've been a teacher and a student for a long time.  Still, tonight is a milestone.

In recognition of that milestone, I would like to express my tremendous, ongoing gratitude to the teachers that have helped me get to this point.  I could speak generally to the teachers that have informed my life, which of course animates my practice, but then I'd be here all day, and what began as a mild procrastination before I calculated _________________________ (INSERT CONFIDENTIAL WORK BUSINESS HERE) would turn into a serious productivity drain.  No one wants that.  

So in the interest of brevity, let me a send a namaste to the five people that have had the greatest influence on my practice of asana.

Lori Burgwyn and Deb Lazer, you taught me that a studio could be a community.  You provided the space for my practice and my heart to grow, and you always went above and beyond to support my progress.  That you do so for all of your students is a humbling lesson I will try to keep in mind with my own students.  Namaste.

Mike Lyons and Andrea Martinez, you taught me that grace under pressure was not only possible but the place to be.  In the middle of all the noise and the chaos of the universe, there is a place of deep quiet and total peace, and I don't think I would understand that nearly as thoroughly without your teachings.  Namaste.

Nancy Shelly, you are my favorite yoga teacher ever.  You got me to go to my first yoga class, then reminded me of yoga when I was hunched over a desk finishing my dissertation and complaining about my back.  Everything that has happened since stems from that moment, so any good I've accomplished in the practice of yoga or will accomplish in its teaching is your good too.  I love you so much. Namaste.

Now, who's up for some yoga?

Meditation Overload

I am in the midst of an identity crisis that cuts to the core of who and what I want to be.

Do I want an end to suffering?

Do I want to awaken?

Or do I want to transcend the limits of human perception and trip the light fantastic?

The first wonderful experience I had in meditation came about two years ago, thanks to Grant Morrison and his wonderful little book called The Invisibles.  Morrison sold me on the idea that there was a hidden world just outside of the reach of the every day that humans had and could access, if they'd just dive far enough into the weird and wild, where all the good stuff resides.  The fan website Barbelith led me to Condensed Chaos, which is as good an introduction into the principals of magic as I can imagine.

One of the first things an aspiring magician needs to learn is how to achieve the gnostic state.  Basically, you close your eyes or look into a mirror or a bowl of water and just...let you mind go, wander, play.  Don't forbid yourself from seeing anything, and you might see everything.  When I stopped worrying about whether what I was seeing was real, I could see a lot more cool stuff, a lot more meaningful stuff.  I saw myself as Gandalf retreating to my castle of ice.  I met my spirit animal, the grey wolf.  I journeyed deep into the heart of death and found complete peace there.  I learned so much about myself, and I felt I was moving forward.

Books got me on the gnostic path, so it's fitting that a book should have knocked me from it.  Magic had shown me glimpses of the whole world, but I didn't want a piece of the world.  I wanted the whole thing, and Buddhism Plain & Simple seemed to offer that.  All one had to do was let go of everything superfluous and just...wake up.  Awaken to ultimate reality.  Right now, because there is only now.  The key wasn't to let your mind wander but to stay present in the moment.  If one could understand right now completely, without hope or fear of anything else, one might actually wake up, and then one really could see everything.  As I learned just a little bit about Tibetan Buddhism, I saw a lot of stuff floating around like bodhisattavas that matched some of what I saw in gnosis, which only furthered my belief that Buddhism was big enough to encompass magic and a lot of other stuff.  I felt I was moving forward.

With the beginning of yoga teacher training, I've encountered a third organizing principle for meditation.  Yogic meditation seems to want to calm the fluctuations of the mind, not for the sake of awakening, but just because.  Because it will make you better, fuller, more content.  I confess I've thought the least about this type of meditation and that it appeals to me the least.

Frankly, all that the yogic ideas behind meditation have done is bring to a head a situation that had been developing for quite some time, which is that I've officially hit meditation overload.  Too many chefs have spoiled the broth.  I'm confused.  I don't know whether to seek calm or enlightenment or visions from another dimension of reality.  Too many ideas are competing for the time I spend in lotus.  I don't feel like I'm moving forward.

In the long run, I'm not too concerned about where I am.  I'm not going to stop meditating, and I recognize that even the best journeys have times spent at pit stops, lost, or stuck in a ditch.  I believe Steve Hagen when he says that all we need to do is show up and meditate each day, and the practice will teach us everything we need to know.  Ultimately, I think all of these paths have one final destination, anyway.  The Buddha and the great magicians and yogis of history are all chilling at the top of the same mountain together, calmly sipping mushroom tea and tripping off the world in all its glory.

I get all that.

But that doesn't mean I'm not frustrated now.

The 10 Year Plan

Sorry for the lack of posts lately.  I just started yoga teacher training, which has eaten up what little free time I used to have.  Anyway, I wrote this little ditty below for TT, so I figured I'd post it.  It's a little more heavy on the "me" talk than I'd like, but it is what I wrote today.

10 years from now, I intend to be awake. This goal makes a terrible topic for an essay about the future, because I can do everything I need to do achieve enlightenment today. I can meditate. I can practice yoga. I can live mindfully. I can be aware of my surroundings at this moment in time. The trick is to actually do these things, so the rest of this essay will describe the conditions that I believe will best provide the conditions to wake up.

10 years from now, I hope to have achieved financial independence. I define financial independence as some combination of accumulated resources that will allow me to live comfortably for the rest of my life and a job with tremendous flexibility in the hours it requires and the location where it can be performed. Ideally, I’d like to be a full-time professional writer, while teaching enough yoga to satisfy my passion for teaching but not so much as to distract from my own practice. I would like whatever work I do to be ethical and help as many people as possible achieve inner peace and their own definition of a good, full life. I also hope to have been and continue to be a good boyfriend/husband, son, brother, and friend. I don’t believe I have to change much to accomplish this goal.

But let’s explore this “writer” thing a bit more, shall we? Five years from now, I hope to receive regular income from writing. Even if I cannot be full-writer, given the writing I have already done, I believe it is realistic that I can get paid to write. I need to figure out how to do this, soon. The path that I have observed most writers who I admire and become professional is to maintain an active blog that they update frequently. I have such a blog that I relaunched in December and updated faithfully until teacher training started. The two immediate obstacles that I have to overcome is the lack of updates since teacher training has begun and my propensity to diversify my topics. On the former, teacher training, my regular practice, cooking, and talking with my girlfriend eats up most of my free time, but I do spend a fair amount of time each day playing video games, so time is not an excuse. On the latter, a blog focused on a single topic may be the best way to move towards financial relevance, but I think I want to resist that urge, at least for a little while longer. People are multifaceted. Their writing should be allowed to be as well. The topics on which I currently write—my yoga and meditation practices and my desire to try to live an ethical life and move towards enlightenment and waking—seem to be pretty in line with my goals of trying to earn a living ethically.

One year from now, I hope to have had writings published at major internet yoga and sports portals. Places like Elephant Journal and Mind Body Green publish work whose quality and content I am confident I can replicate. I have a reservoir of approximately 150 blog entries, many of which I could revise to make suitable for publication. The best way thing to do might be to look back and see which of my pieces have garnered a positive reaction and to make them fit the submission guidelines at EJ.

Last Night, A Pose Saved My Life

A week or two ago, friend of the Blogcast Inspector Clawseau said she wanted an entry on how yoga changed my life.  I'm not sure if I've been pushing it off, but I hadn't done it yet.

The universe has a reason for everything.

Tonight, I got home and laid down on my couch.  It was too late to make either of the classes at Cleveland Yoga.  As it turns out, I was too discouraged and exhausted to even make it off the couch for the class that takes place in my building.  I passed out for about 45 minutes and woke up as miserable as ever.  Yoga was just about the last thing I wanted to do.

But my teacher training starts tomorrow.  Maybe the fear of embarrassing myself in front of my classmates got me moving.  Maybe it was the memory of Tuesday's class, which was one of my best practices ever.  For whatever reason, I managed to get off the couch, roll out my mat, and do 20 minutes of the most miserable Sun Salutations imaginable.  I couldn't leave the past behind.  Every movement felt broken, tedious, so, so, so very wrong.

20 minutes into the practice, however, I got a gift that almost brought me to tears.  I sat and meditated, and I realized that, with the exception of my weary head, I felt fantastic.  My body felt alive, energized, healthy, and altogether perfect.  My body was so perfect that it even had areas that were still tight, which meant, OMG, I could do MOAR YOGA.  

I proceeded to practice for another hour in complete bliss and gratitude.  By the end, even my brain felt pretty good.

What have I gotten out of yoga?  It grows and changes every day.  Today, I got out of my own mess of a head.  When all seemed lost, I got on my mat, and everything got better.

When Yoga Hurts

This practice keeps teaching me things.

Somehow, some way, I decided my practice needed less focus on technique and more on how my body actually felt.  In Journey Into Power, which I'm reading as part of my teacher training, Baron Baptiste instructs us to do as much, but I'm happy to say that the idea came to me from my practice.  At some point in the last few months, my practice told me that a laser focus on how it felt was my next step.

I'm less than happy with the results.

I hurt.  

It's not hurt from my practice; rather, it's hurt my practice is revealing.  I have lot of hurt stored up in my body.  Specifically, deep in my hips and in my shoulder joints and in the muscles of my upper back.  I'd known about the back muscle stuff for a while.  I have the hardest time relaxing my shoulders, which may have been the impetus for my new emphasis.  I was tired of teachers pushing my shoulders down in Warrior 2.

The soreness in my joints surprises me.  Some of it may come from the fact that I'm not quite back in the practice rhythm I was in prior to Christmas.  I had been hitting the heated classes at Cleveland Yoga 3-4 times a week, and they are the most rigorous classes I have attended on a regular basis.  The "rigor=openness" equation isn't perfect, but in my case, I think I was more open, particularly in the hips.  Due to travel, I haven't gotten back into that rhythm post holidays yet, and my body is telling me I need to.  

But I don't think that's everything.  Baptiste talks about how our bodies carry around everything that ever happened to us, an idea he grabbed from the ancients.  Every hurt, every slight, every stress, and every REBUT has a home in our body, until we learn to let go of it.  I think of myself as a person with a good sense of my inner landscape who does a good job of avoiding repression.

And yet...

During Saturday's savasana I had a pretty deep conversation with the muscles in my upper back.  I told them they didn't need to hold all of my stress, that the rest of my body and my heart and mind and soul could help handle the load.  My shoulders weren't so sure.  They started talking about all the stuff that I could be worried about: my job, my relationship, my future.  They said that they'd been taking care of all that heavy stuff for so long, that I had no idea what I was getting into when I said I would take some of the load.  I left class pretty sad but grateful, because I felt like I understood some little part of me I hadn't before.

Hmm.