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During this last round of Flow Teacher Training as I was working my way through instruction on how to assist students in various yoga asanas (poses), one of the trainees asked a question that I’d not been asked before. She said, “Cory, is it possible to assist yourself?”. I didn’t have to ponder the question long, the answer was and is an emphatic “yes!”
Life is the teaching you what you need to learn. Are you listening?
How to learn from life, reflections on what it means to be a student, and Led Zeppelin.
A recent online discount for a $19.99 yoga teacher certification program came at a fortuitous time because the topic for this week is an often glossed over aspect of most wisdom traditions in the West; the teacher-student or guru-sisya relationship.
When I stepped onto the rock, it never occurred to me that I might be swept off of it. Initially, I tried to hold my ground when the wave hit, but then the water rushed over my head and I realized how helpless I was to its sheer force. I remember reaching for the rocks, trying desperately to find something to hold onto and failing. I didn’t feel my body hit the rocks though I know it did. I had no choice but to surrender and ride the wave, and I was filled with a sense of both panic and calmness. I didn’t know if I would come up – I didn’t even know where up was.
What makes a great yoga teacher? Do I listen to these voices in my head and let them inform my teaching? Or do I hear these voices and move out anyways, making myself vulnerable and taking a risk? This is not easy work. Sure, it gets easier with time, but I often find the more experience and knowledge I gain, the more I can use information to cover up my vulnerability, my fear of being judged by a room full of people. Fear of sharing my deepest self with others and being rejected.
Step to the top of your mats.
This is what the instructor says at the beginning of most every yoga class.
I hear this so much that it’s automatic to simply step to the top when I’m told. I can be finishing a conversation, coming up from a seat or coming down from a stretch. It doesn’t matter. Everything stops, my mind clears, and I step to the top.
But last week I heard something else.
Step to the top of your mats, the instructor announced. And when I did so, my mind, on its own accord, suddenly responded in silence, Reporting for duty!
I’ve never really had a thought surprise me. I usually know what I’m thinking about. But on that day my response was as automatic as my step to the top. And even though no one could hear my mind speak out, everyone else reported for duty, too.
