So...one of the places where I teach yoga, is a gym. A very nice gym. A sort of fancy-pants gym. And I am super grateful to be teaching there, it comes with lots of great perks and the students are sweet and very game...but, it took me some time to figure out exactly how to teach there.
Because a gym, in case you weren't aware, is not a yoga studio. A yoga studio is a place where people go to breathe deep and listen to tinkly chime music...a gym is a place where people go to sweat and not have to talk to people. Because of this, expectations in a gym yoga class are a little, well...different.
After many months now of teaching there, I feel like I've figured it out pretty well--I give 'em what they want and make them sweat, and I give them what I want and sneak in a bunch of spiritualisms about the breath. But there is one interesting problem which remains (which, in all fairness, is not specific to gym yoga, but to yoga classes everywhere) and that is the dogged determination, among several students, to push themselves into poses they aren't capable of doing. Because they want to do it. Because they want to have accomplished it. And their body be damned.
Now, honestly, part of the reason I even recognize this behavior to begin with is because that's how I started my own practice. Read any of my early posts in this blog and you will run across at least one or two references (per post) to my "advanced" practice. Oooh, yes....aren't you all iiiiiiiimpressed? And I would be kidding myself if I said that I was completely beyond that. I'm not. I just don't do it all in the front row anymore, like a big show-off. (Now I show off quietly, in the back row. Everyone knows the back row is where the reeeeeeeally advanced students practice. That's so we don't make any of you plebeians uncomfortable. Isn't that gracious of us?)
Ahem.
Anyhow (get to the point, Lia!)...there's this new student in class at the gym, a lovely young man from India, who I like very much, who has obviously done some yoga and is naturally flexible, but WANTS to be a lot further along in his practice than he actually is. And the other night, over and over again I kept trying to give him assists, and over and over again he wanted to do things his own way. I tried to pad him up with a blanket in pigeon and he demurred, insisting that his "hips are very open", even though I, looking at his body, could tell that they are, um...not. He said he knew that his hips were open because he couldn't feel anything at all in "double pigeon" another hip opener. In response to which I thought, but didn't say aloud, that's probably because you're doing it wrong. Tee hee. And then later, during wheel (the big fat back-bend of class) he told me that it went a lot better for him if he just pushed himself right on into it, and didn't pause on the top of his head to adjust his shoulders and arms first. Right, I said, but that doesn't mean you're doing it safely. To which he acquiesced, and allowed me to give him some help into the pose.
And this is terrible to admit, but I have to say that afterwards...I felt a little smug. A little like: I'll show you how to do wheel properly, mister! Who's the teacher now, huh? Who's the teacha naaaaaahoooooow?
But then, ah then...cut to after class...I'm straightening the mats and the towels and my new lovely Indian (did I mention he was Indian?) student comes over to me, to thank me for class, and right away I find out that I'm sort of, um, butchering his lovely Indian name. "Indian names are hard to pronounce," he says graciously. (Oh, ouch!) And then he asks me, did I know that tonight is an Indian holiday? No, I say (shamefacedly), which one? Guru Purnima, he says. Oh, I say. (I have no idea what that is). Yes, he says, Guru means teacher (I practically have to cover my mouth to keep myself from shouting I know! I know that word!) and Purnima means full moon, so it's the festival of the full-moon dedicated to the great teachers. Oh! I say (burning with bad-yoga-teacher shame)...awesome.
Oh my god, oh my god...I honestly, people, I had to stop myself from just idiotically naming off all of the Indian holidays that I do know. I was madly trying to figure out how to work in a reference to Diwali just so he didn't think I was completely clueless. (Diwali is the festival of lights. I know about that one. I've read about it on Wikipedia.)
And after he left, once I got over my weird burn-y shame, I realized...I had been doing EXACTLY what I was (smugly) encouraging him not to do. I had squandered an opportunity to, I don't know, maybe find out more about this Guru Purnima from the actual real-live Indian man standing in front of me, and instead I had just closed myself off entirely from his knowledge because I didn't want him to know that I didn't know what he was talking about. Did I really think that he expected me, just because I'm a yoga teacher, to be entirely well-versed in Indian culture? Maybe as much as he thought that I would expect him, being of Indian descent, to be a perfect yogi....
But the truth is, I have learned yoga, almost exclusively, from young white women...most of whom are American, some from foreign countries, but none of those countries are India. And while I have learned a lot about Hindu customs and gods and goddesses...my knowledge of all of that, if I'm being honest, is far from robust. And for my young student's part, people in India, (I do know this), aren't all crazy gung-ho about the asana (the physical practice of yoga) like we are in the west. I've heard from friends who have gone to India that it's nearly impossible to find a "yoga class" that isn't being led by a foreign teacher on retreat there. There is much more emphasis put on the other limbs of yoga in India...smartly, I'm sure...so I had no expectations of him being some kind of perfect yogi.
But this is what we do, isn't it? We paint this picture of where we want to be, what things are supposed to look like, what the finished version of the pose is supposed to be...and then we just jam ourselves into it. Forgetting that there are steps along the way. Forgetting that where we are RIGHT NOW, this expression, exactly as it is...is the most important first leg of any journey. And then, when we get to the end, when we yank ourselves into wheel or just get ourselves out of that uncomfortable conversation...we're less than. Our back is hurting. Or our pride.
And I am in this moment in my life right now where there is so much momentum, leading to the culmination of this one particular vision (W-E-D-D-I-N-G) and every day I am trying to remind myself...be here. Appreciate this, this right now. This planning part...this pausing on your head to make sure things are properly aligned...you're not going to get this part back. This is the part that sets the stage for what's to come.
So, enjoy it, Shanti-towners...even if it means you have to admit you don't know as much as you thought you did....
