So many of us are running to a yoga studio in an attempt to run away from stress, boredom, church or childhood memories. We intellectualize, deny or say it’s just another physical workout. We want yoga to fix our problems, and then get emotional and reactive when it brings our problems to the fore. Intention is really just an acceptable word for motive and yoga has become utterly socialized.
We’re walking in with a desire to please, with our fear of rejection, and our need to be accepted. No matter how choreographed the sequencing is or how pop cultured the music is, the moment people engage their breath and their movement they are playing with shadows, broken hearts, old wounds and any kind of yoga doesn’t fix our problems or cure our illnesses so much as it heals our relationship with reality. Yoga made everything so clear it enabled me to do the things I needed to do, and with AeroYoga, I did it all with the speed of a super hero, to work with my own issues so skillfully that I can, perhaps, be a more useful member of society.
We call RYT 200s ‘teachers’, because that’s what the market demands. It’s easy and we want what we want. But convenience isn’t necessarily ethical. RYT 200s are woefully unequipped to deal with transference or trauma, being nothing more than a representative sampling of society, themselves. Transformation happens interpersonally. A teacher can see patterns and truths that we can’t see, that we didn’t know were there simply because we’re too close to them. The student teacher role is one of intimacy, trust and time.
Yoga restores us to the world. I can help people see where they are stuck in postural and behavioral patterns. That might provoke them to some personal shifts but that is all I am qualified to do. In the end it is not about how many retreats you held, 'pieces of paper' that says you are qualified or magazine articles you have accumulated. It's about how effectively you apply the knowledge acquired to facilitate another persons transformation process.
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