When did we all become so precious?

There is a fine line between having your preferences to sometimes being a real spoiled yoga – where does the teacher step in..

Has a yoga class ever been not exactly what you were expecting on that given day that you actually rolled up your sticky mat and left the room in disgust, angry at the teacher? But just yesterday you were nodding your head about the importance of being present and the Buddhist teachings of empyting your cup? Chances are you are the same person who gets angry when the teacher does not tell that annoying woman in the row in front of you to stop checking her iphone? Where is the teacher, why is she not teaching this woman about yoga etiquette? you balk inwardly, (often outwardly with a look of disdain). Yet, just yesterday, you left mid-way, when the instructor started teaching in a style you didn’t like. I’m outta here, this is not what I want.

We all have our preferences (although yoga says we should not be attached to those likes and dislikes). That is ok, that is a difficult practice in itself – a practice in detachment. But let’s call a kettle black here – there is a fine line between having your preferences to sometimes being a real spoiled yoga brat.

Yogis everywhere are seeking salvation from their egoic selves – as much as we hear from Pantajali’s ancient teachings that it is an inside job, we still believe a yoga instructor and the perfect class will save us from all our problems on some days. Yet when things don’t go according to plan -the class is not how we imagined it would be for US – the teachings go out the window. Without realizing it we become just as selfish as that woman who came in late or that grunting man. The day we had hoped for – the day of Salvation- was not perfect.

So you storm out. I can’t take this anymore. You blame the teacher, and maybe you even let management know because you KNOW yoga.

You know yoga because you have studied with Rodney Yee at Kripalu one weekend, because you have visited Tulum, and you have a Manduka mat. Ask Rodney, if he would agree with you storming out?

As yoga has matured so rapidly in the West, the role of the teacher has diminished greatly which is really not surprising since it has also become a part of the fitness and therapy industry in a sense. People take take take. Yoga initially was a respected practice, one that was honored, revered. NOT a fitness routine or a therapy. The teacher was there to guide you, BUT he/she also to hold up the mirror to you. In a Zen tradition, the teacher would sneak up behind his meditating disciples and whack them with a stick. He did so to make sure they were being present, teaching them to wake up. His intention was that of tough love, not masochism.

Any great teachers push you out of your comfort zone, challenge you. How will you grow otherwise? They are the ones who provide some narcissistic injury, a boo boo to your ego. Let’s be reminded of the GURU mantra reminds us: teachers come in all shapes and forms – the teacher is everywhere; it is up to us to see it. ‘The teacher will arrive when the student is ready’. It’s not that the man in the orange robe from India will appear at your doorstep, but that you will keep doing the same things over and over — until one day when you are ready, the teacher will appear —in the form of another relationship gone wrong, or some creative block that you hadn’t seen, or some fear that stops you from going for what you want. The teacher has always been there – you just weren’t ready to see it. Until that point, you will probably find something outside of yourself to blame. How quickly we forget – yoga is an INSIDE JOB.

A not so-uncommon story of a NYC yogi:
One day, a woman who I had never seen before took the Wednesday 9am class. She carried an energy that communicated distrust right off the bat. There was that air of arrogance that comes from being an ‘intermediate’ type student- (intermediate having absolutely nothing to do with her ability to execute asanas). The beginner and advanced student know they know nothing, it’s the intermediate student who thinks they know something. Ponder that. At the end of class, I played a segment from Carolyn Myss’ audio book, Sacred Contracts. We all have certain ‘contracts’ on a soul level with people; contracts wherein we all come in to one another’s lives for a ‘reason, season or a lifetime’. It’s what yoga has been teaching for centuries. The woman who was a hater from the beginning (my hunch was accurate) –gets up in the middle of Savasana, releases a loud sigh while stomping across the room to put her blocks away, shaking her head in absolute disgust (how dare she play an audio book!) completely disrupting the other students in the room. The sign that gave it away that she was disapproving was that she was placing her hands over her ears during the short time she was actually in Savasana. I am also aware that this is not everyone’s cup of tea — listening to a recording in Savasana. However, I was only playing a short segment to last 2 minutes, and plus, I didn’t come out that day to please this particular woman. So rather than sticking it out, and maybe then deciding not to take my class in the future, because of her preferences and her IDEA of how the class should go, she decided to disturb the entire class’ rest time. On her way out, we exchanged a few words.

I called her selfish and rude. Yep, I did.

She complained saying that I was rude and hurtful.

My regular students of over a decade would never do that even if they thought to. Some could argue the point that perhaps she was having a bad day. I get that. Maybe I could have looked at her and said, ‘she must be suffering inside, has too much ego, and I will just let her go her way’, taking a Path of Least Resistance. Maybe to someone else or on a different day, that would have been the right approach, but on this day, I could not allow the brat to get away with it so easily. Where is my role in this as a teacher if I don’t say something?

Note: She is probably the same student who would get angry with me for not ‘teaching’ the cell phone user or the latecomer. However, I would most definitely would make a teaching to those people as well.

In my lifetime of practicing under some of the greatest teachers in many disciplines (ballet teachers the most demanding), have called me out on my stuff – selfish, rude, lazy, not-listening, you name it. They were the best. My ego has been hurt many times, but it made me stronger and wiser — after I got over the initial bruise to my ego, I realized there is truth in whatever was being pointed out to me.

We use our yoga as therapy and expect our teachers to only say inspiring, nice things, but then when they are a little more vocal in certain moments, a little brazen, they are rude and hurtful.

This woman and I, funnily enough, had a Sacred Contract – she probably is still hating, but on my end, I she taught me with her behavior to remember to be an empty cup when there is something that is against my personal preferences.