Dude, where's my yoga teacher?
I’ve been totally short-changed on my yoga journey.
Never once have I had a Real Yoga Teacher.
You know – the kind you have an on-going relationship with.. the kind who supports your yoga journey parsing out morsels of wisdom and insight at the exact moment you need them… the kind who’s interested in your development and answers all your questions.
Nope, thanks to some cruel twist of fate, I’ve been left to blunder through the mine field of yoga all by my lonesome.
Partly this might have come down to geography – when I first woke up to a desire for a Real Yoga Teacher, I was living in Glenorchy, population 250, and no resident yoga teachers.
Then I moved to Queenstown, population 23,000 and, a smattering of yoga teachers who I auditioned for the role as My Yoga Teacher.
None of them got a call-back.
My expectations of what it took to be a Real Yoga Teacher were high – knowing postures wasn’t enough, I wanted a teacher that could see through the bullshit, and who knew what Kundalini was all about.
I finally had a run-in with such a teacher in about 2006 – Swami Shantimurti.
From across a crowded room, he spotted the fear I was drowning in and knew – just knew – that I’d had a Kundalini Awakening. Now that was the kind of teacher I wanted. Problem was, this Ashram Yoga yogi lived in Auckland.
The Swami was kind enough to spend some time with me one-on-one and give me a few practices designed to help ground and centre before sending me on my way. Those tit-bits of pranayama and mantra kept me going for a year or two.
Fast forward to Wellington in 2008 and I’m out cruising the local yoga scene looking for a Real Yoga Teacher. And I found lots – Wellington is awash with gifted teachers. But after a couple of years of teaching yoga myself, these people were my peers and so instead of becoming my Real Yoga Teacher, they became my friends.
Finally, in 2010, I got myself over to LA for an immersion teacher training with a Real Yoga Teacher, Shiva Rea. This was it – had I finally found my teacher? Well, yes & no.
In my ideal world, a Real Yoga Teacher has time to work with individual students on a regular basis. In Shiva’s Rockstar Yoga Teacher world, she’s teaching classes of 100 students plus, and leading immersions with 70 + students.
The one interaction I had with her was illuminating, but with me in NZ and her fulfilling her Rockstar Yoga Teacher Dharma, there’s no space for the kind of relationship I’d been dreaming of…
So it was back to New Zealaand, sans-Real Yoga Teacher.
Back in Wellington, moaning about my lack of a teacher to friend and… yes, yoga teacher, he asked:
Why do you want a teacher?
Well… you know, so they can tell me what I’m doing right and what I’m doing wrong. So they can guide me with exactly what I need. Give me the perfect practice that will fix me.
He laughed.
Who’s been guiding you for the last ten years?
Yeah but… I want a Real Yoga… OH.
That pulled me up short.
Who had been guiding me for the last ten years or so on my yoga journey?
With no Real Yoga Teacher ever looming large, I’d been forced to rely on my own resources.
I’d had to figure it out all by myself, trial and error, listening to my breath, observing results, taking note of what worked and what didn’t.
And along the way, life had become my teacher. My breath, my body, my heart, my relationships, my friends, my families, my environment… everything taught me in some way shape or form.
I’d been forced, by circumstance, not to be a yoga student, but to BE a yogi.
All those years of looking for a Real Yoga Teacher, and feeling like I was missing out… well, I was missing out…
On the fact that…
I didn’t need a teacher and it was actually a great gift to learn yoga from the world itself.
So this autumn, as the leaves fall and the days shorten, I’m letting go of my search for a Real Yoga Teacher.
I’m accepting life as my teacher, my breath as my guide, and my heart as my light…
I feel lighter already. More complete. More… perfect.
Wow, Kara-Leah! This post really resonated with me, as I’ve also been looking for a Real Yoga Teacher. I appreciate the permission I felt with this post–to continue on my path, learning from great teachers along the way, but also trusting more and more my inner teacher.
Hey Anna,
I’m beginning to think the only Real Yoga Teacher is that inner teacher… and any real teacher worth their salt will constantly refer you back to Your Inner Teacher. While giving you a few delicious pointers along the way! Thanks too for the shout-out on Twitter, always appreciated!
Blessings,
KL
Yahoooooo! Good for you! Life is our teacher every moment of every day, that is if we choose to listen! Some lessons are easier to grasp than others, but isn’t that always the way?!?!
Hey Theresa,
So true… the idea of a an all-knowing teacher totally focused on one’s growth is so seductive… but nothing but a fantasy really!
Blessings,
KL
I have had the same experience. I was side-lined by injury so i spent 4 months practicing at home. I went back to a yoga class yesterday and felt good but i noticed that something was missing. I couldn’t name it but i think it was that i was not doing “my yoga” that i had been doing at home. I believe that after some time we realize that we are our own best teachers.
Hey Mary,
Good on you for keeping up the practice at home while injured. I reckon we forget classes exist to get us to the point where we can ‘graduate’ and practice by ourselves at home. Enjoy YOUR yoga.
Blessings,
KL
Beautiful. Thank you!
Nice to find the only Guru you will ever need…when we surrender to ourselves, the search ceases to exist, for in the searching, we miss the Truth… 🙂
Oh, boy, you summed that up well!
Beautiful!
Blessings,
KL
Kara-Leah, the inner teacher is the only one that you will never outgrow. On my second trip to India to see Sai Baba, the message that I bought home was to look to my own inner teacher. I went on my first two trips to India with my spiritual teacher. While we were there on the second trip some things happened that left me without an outer teacher. I hated it. Like you, I wanted a teacher who could guide me and teach me new stuff. I was plainly told that I was to look to my inner teacher. Still today 12 years after that second trip to India I still only have my inner teacher. Congratulations on discovering that you have a pretty good inner teacher. That is where your power comes from – inside, not out.
Hey Patricia,
I loved this line:
It’s a great quote! Thank you 🙂
KL
I sooooo loved this and could have written the same thing. I recently blogged about how much i miss a studio and teacher to practice with… I realized how much I love being on my own, but also how much I love the connection with a mentor. Still searching while growing the one inside of me.
Thanks for the inspiration, the wisdom and the commiseration! xo
Hey Nancy,
It sounds like there’s a whole tribe of us Teacher-less yogis out there… it is soooo nice to connect to a Mentor as well. May you find the one you’re looking for!
Blessings,
KL
Another thing to remember is that even if you think you have found a Real Yoga Teacher, they are still human. There’s much to be learned from putting someone on a pedestal, only to have expectations dashed at one point or another.
I feel that keeping in touch with inner wisdom is extremely important, whether or not there is an outside Guru connection.
Sigh… I know! Makes me wish I could have Yoda as my teacher. At least then he wouldn’t be blighted with the whole being-human thing!
Blessings,
KL
For me it’s gone full circle.
In the early days I dubbed myself the Heretic Yoga Practitioner, really just as a way to formally label my own frustration at not being able to find “home” in several different Yoga styles.
It’s only natural to blame the limitations of the teacher or the format etc but in truth it was more a reflection on me. I don’t necessarily mean that as a form of self-criticism, but more as a reference to the fact that we must all find out own path. If I could have chosen, I would have preferred to have been able to fall in love with a specific style and teacher, but it just didn’t work out that way. (I will say I was greatly inspired by certain individuals along the way, I’m talking to you Roger!)
I was eventually motivated towards self-practice because most classes I went to did not adequately address the areas where I deeply desired to improve my “flexibility”. At the time, my ambition may have seemed silly and off-target, but looking back, it was an absolutely necessary part of my journey and it makes perfect sense to me now.
Well of course everyone tells you Yoga is not really about the flexibility (and they are right) but the truth is a typical Western Yoga class spends 90% of its time demanding just that. I was actually completely OK with this, because I wanted to be flexible and I really enjoyed the actual practice involved in transforming myself. As a former athlete I have always been very connected to my body. Yoga offered a way to stay connected to my body, but to also unite it with my mind and heart.
Honestly, I’m not going to sit here and write that I think all Yoga teachers are great and the student needs to get with the program. Actually I think most Yoga teachers are guilty of teaching things “a certain way” because that was how they were taught to do it, and therefore any deviation of that approach is deemed to be wrong. Or perhaps they teach it a certain way because it works for them; therefore it must work for everyone else.
There’s an irony in the fact that having struggled so much with fitting in to formal classes that I find myself being a teacher, but I can say I now have a much better understanding of the necessary limitations of a group class, and just as importantly, the very positive aspects that such a setting provides -above and beyond a purely individual practice. Just as importantly, I also have a deep appreciation that as a teacher I walk a fine line between “creating” an experience and “defining” an experience. Trying to do the latter are the hallmarks of a control-freak and I’ve had a lot of those subjecting me to their version of the “perfect” pose over the years.
When I see a participant doing asana in a way that is different to what I am prescribing I make an assessment as to whether they are making their own conscious decision about that variation, or whether they are simply not engaged and connected to their own body. It’s actually very easy to know the difference. A conscious decision is typically made because of physical limitations or because the participant is advanced enough that they are making an informed choice to do it “their way”. In either of these cases I do not give myself a mandate to tell the student they are doing it “wrong” when in fact they are doing it “right” in the context of “their” practice.
I believe very much in the context of “respect” in a Yoga class, but I believe it is a two way street between the teacher and the student.
There definitely came a point where I found myself “wanting” to do Yoga in a group setting again (as a participant, not a teacher). In some respects, nothing had changed and it was the same old shit. But in another respect everything changed because I found I was able to extract the joy and beauty from a group practice without loosing myself to the imperfections. Of late many of the teachers I’ve been to are young and inexperienced, but if the glow is there, even just the glow of their potential, I can still extract joy from the experience. I can still learn from them, or should I say I can access my own inner teacher from the experience they are creating. This joy is available to me now when in the past it was not. It’s like a door that was closed has finally opened. That tells me that somehow, in some way I have grown, and I believe there is a place for group classes, and that “teachers” provide a valuable service, albeit one of great responsibility because like all teachers, they are in a position of power.
Oh I love your comment Bruce! So much wisdom in there… I reckon I’m going to have to write a part two for this article to articulate everything you’ve triggered in me!
Blessings,
KL
Kara-Leah so much of what you write about strikes a chord with me, and this article is no different! I was first introduced to yoga 20 years ago, and have had an “on-and-off” (with lots of off!) practise ever since. over the years i’ve tried different styles and teachers, and never connected to that one person who would guide me on my journey (i was sure they must be out there somewhere!). In the last 18 months i have practised daily at home, and also crossed paths with a few individuals who have inspired me and shined a light that has helped me to finally see that yes, i do have a great teacher, who is guiding me along my path and helping me find my way – myself.
I’m off to read Part 2 now!
Many blessings
Michelle
Hey Michelle,
Amazing how things shift once you begin that daily practice eh? And once we realise we’re the ones we’ve been looking for!
Blessings,
KL
The impact of committing to a daily practice has been totally beyond anything I would have expected (not that i had expectations per se, but you know what i mean!). It is completely out of proportion (in a good way) to the sometimes very small amount of time that i actually manage.
Hey Michelle,
I know – amazing isn’t it. Small daily practice is so powerful, way more than practicing once a week for two hours or so…
I think the importance of finding a realized guru is really important. While you don’t NEED a real teacher, it is of immense help if you want to get out of the body quicker. Would you attempt to understand quantum mechanics on your own? Probably not unless you are extremely dedicated and bright and even then you would likely get lost. This is no different. The ego has so many games to play with you.
Hey B,
I’ve got no desire to get out of my body at all, in fact much of my practice has been about getting back into my body. Would I attempt to understand quantum mechanics on my own? Yes, I would. It’s the kind of person I am… exploratory and experiential. I wonder about everything and explore everything. Yes, the ego has many games, and it is a difficult aspect of working without a realised guru – having no wisdom or discernment to rely on except one’s own, and the wisdom & discernment of my friends and colleagues. Is that enough?