Yoga Teachers Are Regular People (At Least This One Is)

I drink coffee every morning. I also like soda, and I don't drink nearly enough water. I eat pizza and cheeseburgers and french fries. I like to sleep in, and I don't especially like to sweat. I'm a former smoker (heavy sigh) and a nail biter - still - at 42 years old. I procrastinate, I lack discipline, and I yell at my kids more than I care to admit.

I'm not proud of any of this, but I think it's important that I'm real about who I am. I didn't find yoga because my life was perfect--far from it. I found yoga through suffering, and I think most of us who are passionate about yoga, if we're being completely honest, need yoga like we need sleep.

My personal yoga practice is flawed, too. Like many of my students, I prefer going to a class versus practicing alone at home, where I'm likely to notice the dust bunnies and get distracted by my phone. (There is also something magical about being lead by someone else.)

I want to be better in all sorts of ways, and I'm okay with that. To me, this has been one of yoga's most precious gifts--that is, increasing self-awareness without self-flagellation.

One of my teachers says you can't really let go of anything. You have to first recognize it's there (whatever 'it' is) and fully acknowledge it, and then IT LETS GO OF YOU. How freeing is that?! Of course this means things often happen more slowly than we like.

The older I get, the more I think the world is too darn fast for me. Perhaps I'm just a late bloomer. The truth is that it doesn't really matter. We do most of our living in the ordinary moments, and if we get caught up in our thoughts about not being extraordinary, we sure miss a lot.

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It's okay to not be okay

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"Principles of Yoga Don't Discriminate" - Matthew Sanford

Photo Credit: FiberArtGirl I had the privilege of attending an on-line yoga seminar with Matthew Sanford yesterday, thanks to Yoga Alliance (and to my teacher, Julie Rosier , who told me about him years ago). He's been practicing and teaching yoga for 30 years from a wheelchair, paralyzed from the chest down since an accident at the age of 13. He said many brilliant things that I tried to capture. One that stuck with me is t his: "Principles of yoga don't discriminate. Yoga poses do." He went on to explain that everyone has a different outer body, but the inner, subtle body, where you feel yoga, where you experience being alive, does not discriminate. Thus, my job as a teacher is to guide people to experience the subtle body, not just do poses. It's what I hope I've been accomplishing these past 15 years. My trainer, Esther Myers (d. 2004), conveyed this same, powerful concept through three principals of finding the ground, feeling the breath, ...

This Ground, This Breath

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