Once you’ve gone through your 200 hour yoga teacher training, your hardcore anatomy, paid your insurance and RYT fees, you sometimes begin to feel like you Should Know Stuff, that you should be in advanced classes, that your ability to demonstrate xyz poses are crucial to your success as a teacher.

The best YTT lesson I ever received was that your RYT certs were a jumping off point. The first long form (Chen Ch’eng) students learn in Matthew‘s kung fu lineage loosely translates to “The Dance of Sincerity.” Learning its ninety or so movements, stances and techniques is a statement of intention. An RYT program is a statement of intent to be a good teacher, which is often best accomplished by being skillfully vulnerable, admitting when you do not have an answer, and accepting help with grace. It’s a journey that will end when–with equal parts effort and ease–life leaves my body.

Thank you Octavia Raheem, and thank you friend Gina Minyard: you remind me from afar.

I’ve gotten a lot of officious people off the street, in my classes, who feel it’s their right and obligation to come up to me and tell me there are WAYS of getting rid of my weight. What I’d rather be rid of was their projected judgment, sanctimony, and amazed wonder.

In a community that professes fierce love of your body, we still see students and teachers AMAZED that a fat person could be joyously embodied, be present, and have a beautiful practice. We see a lot of value placed on their “success stories,” where they have lost half themselves and become yoga teachers to share their joy. We undertake ridiculous experiments and pat ourselves on the back for the bravery of “career suicide” to “understand fat bodies,” when all you need is to respectfully use your training, curiosity and a sense of human decency. A fat student can tell you through posture that their belly is impeding their forward fold. A manual self adjustment (lifting from pelvic creases upward) could CHANGE THEIR LIVES, and your expectations. Teach that adjustment as an exploration of extreme Uddhiyana Bandha and you’ll teach anyone with a belly how to be a better steward to their practice without singling them out.

Watch your students. If you’re really curious, offer someone who needs a lot of in-class adjustments a free private lesson and allow both of you to teach the other. It will be more priceless than rubies to both of you.

One of the most powerful teachings in my life comes from the Pratyabhijna-hrdayam, (if you can find it and are into this sort of thing, hunt down The Splendor of Recognition: An Exploration of the Pratyabhijna-hrdayam, a Text on the Ancient Science of the Soul.) It comes down to the Five Acts of Shiva, the Cosmic Dancer. Everyone hears a lot about the whole creation-life-destruction cycle.  However, the remaining two that constantly kick my ass are called Concealment and Revelation.

Deep within us, there is a place that has no use for the mundane joys, that’s untouched by the crummy fluctuations of our daily lives. It doesn’t give a damn about tomorrow or yesterday. It may say something about me that I can’t separate this concept without thinking of the song “There is a Light and It Never Goes Out.” It is a constant presence, from the spark of consciousness to our last breath; eternal if you’re into that. The universe is made manifest within me, and yea, it never worries about a double decker bus or any of that. It just IS, and it’s the part of us that encourages us to constantly seek to know ourselves, to unfold, to open, to connect. That’s the “secret,” the big reveal. We catch it in snatches: I hear the rustle of its wings when I unfurl in a sweet backbend, when I am moved by the tidal pull of my breath, when I am speaking truth, when I am standing fully in My Power. When my teaching touches a student and their eyes dart to mine, we share that instant of connection, our lights reflected in each other’s eyes. Likewise, when my teachers’ challenge me, when I find deeper access within myself, my heart goes supernova.

But we forget. Supernovae cannot sustain themselves, although even their remnants are luminous and transformative. The Pratyabhijna-hrdayam is ready for this, and intimates that this is part of being human; being Shiva; being Frodo, Parsifal or Skywalker.

We forget our raditude because it’s delightful to remember.

We do not see clearly until we clean our glasses and wonder how on earth we ever saw through fingerprints and grime. A dirty window dulls the color and light. Clouds obscure the brilliance of the sun, stars and moon. A veil shrouds a bride’s radiance, and distances a corpse from the world of the living. We forget how good it feels to take the journey to meet ourselves, and we fall out of practice over and over again. We fall back into laziness, fear or avoidance: the light is too bright, too much to bear.

Eventually, we find our way back to The Work.  We remember the way it feels to move in the world when we consciously take our rightful place in it. When we have our shit together, there is an ease and surety in action. When we take what we’re given and respond with conscious, premeditated action, we shine out like beacons.  It is splendid, this recognition.

ETA: The delightful Cora Wen says all this in her delightful, earnest way. Bonus: she says it in beautiful Ireland.

Imperfect = I’m Perfect

This time, it’s different. There’s so much effort and thought that goes into planning an Anusara-style class, and that work keeps you grounded and completely, uncomfortably, unflinchingly involved in the guts of living. We theme our classes; not only physically, but emotionally. It’s like theatre without the comforting veneer of character. If your heart’s not in your theme, if you’re not engaged with the material, you come across as full of shit. No one wants to be called on their bullshit when they’re surrounded by a bunch of buff people who know how to bend themselves (and YOU) in terrible configurations.

So the practice keeps me focused and present, even when I’d rather be staring at YouTube or cleaning the tile with a toothbrush. The teaching digs more deeply than the practice, and while my physical progress is best measured in micrometers, I feel like I’m making some serious head&heart-way.