So, there have been a lot of teacher absences at my studio lately, and due to that, there has been a whole lot of THIS lately:
Student walks in to yoga studio, yoga duds on, mat on shoulder, picks up pen, begins to sign in and then stops, abruptly:
Student: "Oh, (insert name of favorite teacher here) isn't teaching?"
Front Desk Worker: "No she's (insert sick/traveling/some other plausible teacher absence excuse here). (Insert name of substitute teacher here) is teaching instead."
Student. "Oh." Puts down pen. "I didn't know."
And then said student turns around and WALKS OUT of studio.
This, people, happens all the time.
I get it, that we develop relationships with teachers and favorite teachers and that when we're bopping our little way to class we're imagining the familiar and beloved teaching style of aforementioned favorite teacher and it can be a big bummer to show up and find out that someone else is teaching. Especially if you don't know the sub or double-especially if you're in some kind of mood that is desperate for the teaching wizardry of your favorite and familiar teach. But, seriously, come on, you're going to LEAVE?! I mean, you've got your yoga pants on! You drove here! You have the hour and a half free!! You have your yoga pants ON! (I know I already said that, it seemed worth mentioning twice...)
I have also seen the faces of substitute teachers to whom this has happened and it's a tiny bit heartbreaking...class sizes shrink down to nothing all because no one knows who you are. And students can be downright insensitive of this whole transaction, making faces and sizing up said unknown subby-dub-dub with a cold, "do I like this" impersonality.
I witnessed one of these substitute-teacher-ditchers the other day and the girl working the front desk at the studio and I shared a moment after said student exited the studio (yoga pants on)...we both see it all the time and are equally confused by it.
"When I feel that way," she said, "that's when I feel like I really have to use my Yoga."
(I love this! As if yoga is like "the force"!)
But she was right...of course you're going to feel that way, at least on certain days--I don't know this person, I don't want to take from this person, but at some point you have to look at that resistance with some curiousity and say, okay, maybe this is EXACTLY the moment to take from someone new. This is the moment to Use My Yoga. Because honestly, part of what happens when you take from a new teacher is that you have to pay a different kind of attention, you may have to deal with whatever feelings you have about proving yourself or hiding away, and you might have to try some stuff you don't like--all very fertile yogic learning opportunities. And it's possible it will ALL be stuff you don't like. I've had those experiences, where I show up and take from a new person and for whatever reason the teaching just does not jive with me...and even though it's aggravating, those are also the moments in which I learn the most. Because I get grumpy and I disappear from my practice and then my mat becomes a deeper training ground for bringing myself back to myself, even in the midst of the grumps.
The familiar is lovely, it is...especially if it's a well-loved familiar, but the willingness to try something for which we will not know the outcome is so vital. It's so easy to accidentally make our lives small--to build it full of prescriptions and safe, known, choices--that I think sometimes we have to just push ourselves into that uncomfortable moment and say, "okay...let me see how this goes...". Maybe this is reading too much into what might seem like a simple choice, but I think that the great gift of the yoga practice is that all of these choices DO mean something...and if you take it seriously, then that uncomfortable "this isn't what I wanted" moment can be a place of learning, and an opportunity to shift.
So, ladies and gents, next time you show up to class and see a name you don't know on top of the sign-in sheet...go anyways. The sub will thank you...and so will you.
xo,
YogaLia
