This month, as of October 15th, I have been honored to teach yoga for 10 years. A decade of offering the light of Yoga to others.
There have been some breaks in there, times when my own health needed attention and the rest of not teaching. The span however, from my first class at Matt Dishman Community Center all these years ago, to the two classes I have taught today, remains the same. Ten years.
I became a teacher because the practice of Yoga Asana and Pranayama were so beneficial to managing my chronic pain that I wanted to share this with others. In becoming a teacher, I felt deeply called to fully practice the Eight Limbs of Raja Yoga.
A lot has changed from that Sunday morning these 10 years ago. I would then show up for a class with every single thing I planned to teach carefully written out in a notebook. For months this is how I taught, always going off the notes. In a way, it was how I learned since most of the Iyengar yoga teachers I studied with would have a lesson plan for the week.
Student Gear
While I still consider my training with Iyengar teachers to be the foundation of my teaching, I’m currently in the process of radically changing my actual approach in teaching to a more fluid, encouraging, gentle approach, even when I’m teaching someone how to do a handstand or arm balance. This evolution in my teaching is part of the process of evaluating my teaching practice, along with on-going self-study that I’ve doing as I work to certifying in Integrated Movement Therapy. I’m concurrently working on certification as a Samarya Yoga teacher.
I still love teaching beginners. I’ve also come to love teaching very fit people, with a well-established practice, how to refine arm balance poses and teach them new ones too. Just this year I’ve been given the gift of teaching senior citizens; my oldest student is 91! I’ve experienced the delight of leading over 100 people at a technology event in 20 minutes of simple Yoga postures and mindful breathing the participants could take with them to do anywhere; they loved it.
Over the years I’ve taught the very fit, people with chronic health conditions, the very thin, little kids, adults, the occasional teen, geeks, artists, larger bodied people, writers, musicians, some who’ve just had major surgery, and fiery seniors who want to learn how to do a shoulderstand or headstand! Each and every student has been a gift to me.
In teaching I try to make an offering, a light. As he lay dying the Buddha told his followers to, “make a light of yourself”. He had shown that a path out of suffering existed, those on the path should become a light for their own sake and for the sake of others.
Shunryu Suzuki was known to paraphrase this when talking to students, exhorting them to “light up one corner”. He said on one occasion, “We say, to shine one corner of the world—just one corner. If you shine one corner, then people around you will feel better. You will always feel as if you are carrying an umbrella to protect people from heat or rain.”
I think of this often when I teach. How important it is to show up, to be present to my students, to make a light for them to see and thereby find encouragement to shine brightly themselves.