It seems to me that there is an obsession with the right certification, degree, qualification, seminar, training, workshop…all marketed to us to push our lives to the next level and achieve a level of satisfaction that was inaccessible to us before. Because we are in an attention economy where outrage sells and being pulled from our accountable center is like…so fucking fun and chill! Or wait…we live in an emotional economy where we expect those we are in disjointed parasocial relationships with to unlock the secret key that allows us to stop intellectually ruminating about our experience and finally settle into an embodied experience of the world around us! Or wait…is it actually that influencers and those that financially benefit from the current organization of (para)social media that are secretly ruining the country?
In a world where everyone is a teacher and a guide, and simultaneously everyone is fodder for more sales, how do we navigate the space between sharing wisdom and acquiring more?
When do we know we’ve had enough training?
What level of experience erases imposture syndrome?
When do you get to consider yourself a “true practitioner” or “a yogi?”
Was it ten years of experience that allowed me to finally break free from the self-critic that repeated the same lies about the work I'm most passionate about? That teaching yoga was not a real job? Was it fifteen years of experience?
I would argue that it was none of those things.
For me, being a teacher with real confidence is more about putting down the role of teacher entirely, rather than propping up some sense of experience or Knowing. Reinforcing the hierarchy between teacher and student creates a pernicious power dynamic that folks who specialize in nervous system awareness explain in detail. I've seen it in yoga studios and within yoga cultures: a charismatic teacher outlines all the ways in which modern life has us living the wrong way, and then pivots to offer the solution for that wrong-ness. All the while those who have a deeply engrained fawn response flock towards a perceived source of authority, self-abandoning and people-pleasing their way into lives that someone else has outlined for them. Years later they wake up and tell everyone that yoga is actually demonic, when in reality, it’s the way in which teachers frame themselves as unimpeachable that creates this dynamic that leads to so much abuse.
And the abuse is pervasive! Across most every lineage of yoga. Because the practice of yoga is an incredible system that can lead to a ton of new vulnerability and receptivity that has to be integrated with care. Hopefully, it is skillfully crafted by the centering of each querent's unique constitution and experience.
In this way, a modern yoga practice where students don’t have an assigned guru who is tailoring a practice for individuals in a specified way, handing the power back to students is even more important. How can I assume that the 60 minutes of asana I share with a room of 20 students will be suitable for each one of their abilities and tolerance? I cannot. Giving the agency back to students allows them to make choices that actually suit their personhood. Creating a cultural environment where students feel like they can make choices for themselves is the hard part.
I love teaching at The Portland Yoga Project for this very reason. While we cannot account for the peer pressure that occurs when you are moving next to someone with a different skill set or movement pattern than you, we can highlight and repeat that this is a practice that is meant to be personalized, that no one knows your body better than you know your body, and that this is a practice that is meant to support your life and mental health, not complicate it.
As for me, I like to break down this hierarchy because I learn from every single class I’ve ever taken or taught. Every teacher is limited by their personal experience and how they are perceived. While I am currently non-disabled, I learn accommodations and options of poses by watching how students make room for their tender parts (both physically and emotionally). By remembering that everyone I am in connection to, no matter how brief or intensely, changes me (and by being excited to integrate that change), I have become a more skillful teacher. A teacher that isn’t susceptible to every passing fad, because my practice isn't about Finally Knowing Everything, but rather Showing Up To What Is.
