Photo from Fionn Claydon via Unsplash
Sometimes my deepest thoughts come through my most superficial activities (I like TV). Lately, some combination of things I’ve been watching (The Good Place, the Cheer documentary on Netflix, a Lindsey Vonn documentary, rock climbing documentaries like this one), and things I’ve been reading (Yoga Biomechanics, Movement Matters), and the yoga I’ve been practicing and teaching, really coalesced into the “pep talk” I gave before class today.
As yoga teachers, it is necessary to be really clear about what is and isn’t Yoga, AND we can recognize and accept that people don’t all come to Yoga class (in its Western iteration) for the same reasons. Yoga is not an athletic endeavor; it is a spiritual endeavor. Yet when people walk into the Yoga studio where I teach, they are definitely expecting a physical practice, while they may or may not be actively interested in anything spiritual. Of course, we could debate all day long about whether this Yoga studio should even exist or whether I should call myself a Yoga teacher — very valid inquiries in the context of cultural appropriation and white supremacy. But right now the studio exists, and I teach there, and I feel it is incumbent on me to both honor Yoga to the best of my ability, and offer people some kind of useful experience.
I also think constantly about the discourse around health and wellness, and there is a contradiction there as well. Certain behaviors might lead to “better” “health” outcomes, but the assumption there is that better health outcomes are what people are after. The athletes in Cheer, Olympians like Lindsey Vonn, rock climbers and mountaineers, and the milieu of other athletes we as a society revere, are not doing what they do for increased health, make no mistake. They do what they do for a better performance. For a win. For the rush. For a lot of reasons. But let’s face it — athletes are really hard on their bodies, and often on their psyches, for the sake of their sport, and whatever it is they receive from that sport that is of greater value to them than safety and physical comfort.
In a public Yoga class, it is difficult as a teacher to suit the experience to everyone present because we may not actually know what is motivating our students to show up in class that day. Sure, we could hope that everyone is there to cultivate a deeper connection to Spirit and the Universe, but that’s likely not true in the moment. A lot of people might be there to increase strength, to feel less tense, or even to perform athletic endeavors for the fun of it, or for the challenge, or from the hit they get from facing fears or doing something they couldn’t before.
In light of the fact that I can’t know as a teacher what each students wants and needs in the context of their current mental and physical state plus all of the other factors that make up a person’s life, what has become important to me is to ask students to engage in self-inquiry about motivation.
What is your motivation for showing up to class today? It is more movement, more stillness, decreased tension, increased strength, more connection with spirit and life force, or something else? How can you align that motivation with your current physical and mental condition, and with your choices during and after class? In that way, something useful for each individual in class can come out of a public, group experience. And perhaps this kind of self-inquiry about motivation starts to permeate actions and decisions outside of the studio, and outside of personal health and wellness. Maybe eventually, we will all think deeply about how our individual thoughts and feelings and behaviors interact with and create impact outside of ourselves and our lives, within the context of the Whole. And that, to me, sounds a lot like Yoga.
Happy practicing! May your breath be with you :).
p.s. I really love this definition of Yoga from Indu Arora - read it for real!