Life As A Yoga Instructor
I chose to have my career as a yoga instructor. There is a lot that goes into it and it constantly develops my public speaking, my creativity, courage, and motivates me to show up to the moment. What qualifies us to teach yoga is that we practice yoga. We must practice what we teach. We also must really love people.
Like any other mission, or purpose in life, it will present us with challenge and some heart break, but as yoga teachers we are humbly willing to show up and rise to the moment, heal our selves, and do all that we can to be of service to our community. It is a great honor to be of service, to inspire people back to their true nature, back to joy.
The goal of teaching yoga is to assist others in the experience of yoga, in enlightenment, consciousness, and liberation from attachment and separation. If we are teaching yoga we have probably experienced moments of this bliss in our personal practice, and we want to share it with every body.
The more present we are to our every moment, the easier it becomes to facilitate and guide the direct experience for others. It is a direct experience that each of us will have to experience for our selves, so this creates a challenge when teaching yoga.
As teachers we can inspire practitioners to show up to the practice, presence themselves, and heal. When a heart opens and softens in the yoga practice you know it, because if you are teaching yoga, you remember how the practice opened, and softened your heart. We are all capable of this feeling. But we cannot rush it. We strive with patient endurance. We always bring it back to love.
It is important to set the tone for the class. We want for our students to trust and listen. So the best way to establish trust is to be consistent. Start and end class on time. This shows your students that you honor their time. The schedule is the time commitment we all agree to, stay with the schedule. Also, if you commit to a class, commit. Don’t sub the class out often. You may loose students if you are not there. It takes time to build a class, a community. It takes time to build the trust to start to guide the exploratory education offered through the practice.
Show up to your own life and keep it simple and happy. If you are a stress ball in your personal life your yoga students will probably feel it. We as yoga teachers get under the energy and inspire our class to feel something, something within them self. As teachers of yoga we can plant the seeds of wisdom and nurture those seeds through the sharing of the scriptures, etc. The scriptures of yoga are hip. They are just as profound today as they were thousands of years ago. When we can take the teachings of yoga and relate it to our life, we can better communicate the consciousness that naturally arises from the practice of yoga.
The best thing we can do as yoga teachers and as yogis is to show others our own lives working for us. To be a teacher of yoga, you do not have to have a teacher certificate or teach classes in a yoga studio. You can teach to your loved ones, your co-workers, just by living it, by practicing yoga. For example, show your children while you are in traffic running late to the next event, how you take a few deep breaths, and remain calm and happy. Show them how you can presence your self to all that arises, side step the drama of emotional escalation, and act in accordance to your values. Talk to them about your experiences with life. Tell them your goals, what you are working on to better your self, show them humility.
Another example is at work, we can teach yoga to others by our ability to stay present and calm under pressure, by our ability to receive feedback with gratitude and humility, and through showing kindness to our co-workers. People feel it when we practice yoga, and it inspires them too to show up, and hold their own. All of us practicing yoga are teaching yoga.
