teaching yoga is easy

“Once you have the formula down, teaching yoga is easy.” – not my quote

A friend and yoga teacher (whom I love and respect) said this to me once.

Huh.  Teaching yoga is easy.

Honestly, I felt minimized.  And, that’s my problem, for sure.  Especially since I didn’t choose to get clarification or discuss exactly what she meant…rather I just banked that comment to revisit it whenever I was spending hours creating a class or workshop and thinking,

This is NOT easy. Why isn’t this easy?

This was not personal but it triggered me.   

Here are a couple questions I asked myself:

Why did that statement make me feel small?

What did it bring up? Why?

Some of my ranting thoughts…my own monkey mind at work! 

You should understand, Jill, this ‘easy’ task of creating a yoga experience for your students has a simple formula.  

Why don’t you just follow it? 

Do you really have to spend so much of your precious time folding in heart and caring and concern, in an effort to remain interesting, fresh, innovative, timely, pertinent…somehow believing, deep down inside, that you can hold space for some inner exploration to happen–for you AND your students?

Teaching, for me, feels like equal parts giving and equal parts receiving. I learn so much about myself every single time. It’s all a part of the practice.

Somehow, I deeply hope that I might be able to create a movement + mindfulness practice that allows students–wait, not only allows, but invites students–to explore simple truths:

What is present now?

What’s in my thoughts, in my heart, in my muscles and my bones, in my subtler body, NOW? 

Vulnerability? Joy? Fear? Self-love, self-hatred? Calm or anxiousness? Stiff or fluid?
Tightness? An old injury? Ease or effort? Anger? Sadness? Curiosity?  Centered or off-kilter?

What do I/we hear when we drop into the body, get quieter, and listen? 

What do we hear when we can let go and trust that we will be guided in a way that moves us out of our monkey-minds into this multi-layered SELF of ours?

What do we hear when we listen to our whole selves–mind, body, soul? 

All the layers.

Observation is such a powerful tool to recognize where we are at any given point.

Then we have a choice.  With the truth we have the opportunity to decide whether that’s where we want to BE, letting the truth be our guide. Stay or shift or maybe move somewhere else.

Sharing anything we are passionate about, like yoga for me, feels like an artistic expression of heart and soul and all my beings.  It is its own language for me to use to communicate with others, where sometimes words would fail me. 

And we can be communicating on every level or layer of the onion of our Selves: physical, energetic, mental, intellectual and our highest self. 

I suppose it could be formulaic, but if feels more like a living, breathing exchange of the most powerful sources of vital energy, alive and changing moment to moment.  And, like each of our very own absolute human potentials are communicating with each other!

Where are you NOW?  Is it where you want to be?

What is your life trying to do through you?

What are you creating or desiring to create?

What are you hiding from or avoiding?  (I ask myself this ALL. The. Time!)

What are you excitedly grabbing hold of and running with?

What are you willing to see?  Or, not see?

What elates the cells of your being?  What triggers you and why?

How can we still the mind and marinate in the many questions?

What can we learn from the varied answers that populate the mind when we get quiet enough to hear?

I’m just talkin’. Sharin’ some meandering thoughts.

Just sitting in my own inquiries–as I like to do–and sharing some things that are present.  

I will continue to engage in my path.  I will continue to bring attention here.

I will do my best to let go of what I think that should look like or to concern myself with what it looks like for others.  And I’ll just keep figuring out how to do ME fully in a way that makes sense to…well…me. 

I’ve included some inspirations below – including a speech of ODub’s;) – where she talks about how you are here to, 

“Fulfill the highest, most truthful expression of yourself as a human being…You are here to max out your humanity.”

There’s some good stuff in there if you wanna check it out below. And, other fun things to ponder.

You totally rock.

THIS WEEK’S INSPIRATION!

Oprah: Do I Matter? 28 min

The Oprah speech at Harvard U is 30 min, but you can skip right to 20:20 for a powerful few minutes.  And, our number one goal as human beings at about 24:12. ;)  But, there’s a whole lot of goodness throughout including some bits about how our perceived failures (“no such thing as failure”) are making us move in a new direction.  I just love Oprah.

Kid President: Pep Talk to Teachers and Students! 4 min

Look for the AWESOME! I love this kid and I got to meet him at WDS a couple years ago.  THE BEST.

Thanks for tuning in and for being awesome. 

I love you.