I do remember in the very early days when I started doing
formal Yoga classes there was a level of intrigue and mystique about the
teachers themselves.
For one thing they possessed a sense of ease and presence in
their own bodies which I immediately coveted. Due to the very nature of the
Yoga practice this seemed to be directly related to flexibility, so I very
quickly became quite obsessed with the idea that in order to gain what they
had, I needed to work very hard to loosen up my (by comparison) impossibly
tight body.
Further more, they also appeared to know something about
life that I did not. The way they viewed
life and the way they lived it seemed so at peace, yet at the same time
strangely out of reach. I came to wonder, after a while, that maybe my
personality did not really give me access to this type of existence, but that
thought alone did nothing to diminish my desire to work very hard at mastering
the physical postures, even though that goal seemed every bit as out of reach
as the goal to seek a deeper understanding of their apparently enlightened
mental and spiritual state.
The actual style of Yoga I was doing at that time had a
strong bhakti/devotional emphasis, which in hindsight definitely presented a
challenge for me given the type of person I am. At this stage in my Yoga
Journey I feel quite strongly that there are many paths towards "self
realisation" and the key to doing Yoga effectively is finding the path
that most suits who you are and where you are -but neither of these statements
are trivial or easy to put a place-marker on. Often it is the very fact that we
don't know who/where we are that we would chose to do Yoga in the first place.
So this mystique of the teachers, I would have to say that
to a certain degree it was a projection of my own limited perception as much as
it was a true representation of the teachers themselves. I think when you are at
a place in your life where you are really looking for answers those who appear
not to suffer that same apparent yearning, by implication do not lack that very
thing for which you are searching. You therefore see these people in a light
that makes them very desirable, both as a role model and as someone you want to
learn from.
How exactly I went from being the person I was then to the
person I am now had it's moment of fundamental transition when more of my focus
and energy started going into the process, and less into the teachers and
personalities who shared them with me. After I left my first style of Yoga,
feeling quite unsatisfied yet still deeply intrigued and inspired, I found
another teacher who taught a style of Yoga that resonated much more deeply.
However due to the actual practice itself being the main attraction, when I moved
on from this teacher I did not loose the Yoga, for that was something I was
already starting to make my own.
Since that time I've had many different teachers, either for
very short or longer periods, but it was always the process, not the teacher
who mattered most. As I am now a teacher myself I have an acute desire to
honour my own belief system about what it means to be a Yoga teacher: To be as
transparent yet as effective as possible in delivering the process, without
ever being confused as being the process (i.e. the Yoga). Therefore I see Yoga
primarily as a large array of processes, each with a fundamental philosophy
underlying them, yet ultimately (and perhaps idealistically) all leading to the
same place.
The funny thing is what inspired me to write this article is
the recent end of a friendship with another Yoga Teacher. Far from being mystics,
For some time I have appreciated more than ever that we are just human like
everyone else. When I look back at those god-like teachers (as I saw them in
the early days) I now realise they never existed. They no doubt had to make the
same painful decisions I (and everyone else) has to make all throughout our
lives: A choice that has no right or wrong answer. Only a choice
made and a choice not made. More than ever the word "Yoga" comes to have
less and less usefulness to me yet at the same time feels like a word I feel I
understand better than I ever have before.
I know I won't ever be that enlightened teacher I imagined
I saw when I first started Yoga, but I don't feel a sense of disappointment or failure about that. I think I am becoming something more real. I know I am vastly
different from the person I was when I started, so transformation has most
certainly been taking place. But I know I will always be human: I know I will
make mistakes and will sometimes be cruel and selfish. Sometimes I will be a
coward when I should and could have been brave. But mostly, I realise that the process of
Yoga has served me better than I could ever have imagined, and that I'm a better
person today than I was yesterday, and that as long as I stick with the process I
will be an even better person tomorrow.
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