Advice to New Teachers
Enjoying the good company of great students during a workshop at Practice Yoga, Austin, TX.
I had been studying with an Iyengar teacher for many years when my friend opened a yoga studio in Prescott, Arizona and asked me to teach a few classes. Although I had been teaching fitness for over ten years and had started subbing local yoga classes, this was the first opportunity I had to teach an ongoing yoga class. I went to my teacher and told him I had been asked to teach some classes, but was worried that I might not be ready and that I would end up looking back at the experience and think, “Why in the world did I think I was ready to teach yoga?” (This was way before the days of ubiquitous 200-hour teacher training programs. Most teachers “back then” started teaching without attending a formal training. Of course, I had been practicing around seven or eight years by then, so there was that. But still, different times.)
He listened, smiled, and said, “Well, first of all, everyone teaches before they are ready. It’s built into the system, like parenting. No one is ready to be a parent when they start. You learn how to do it as you go along.”
So, while some people are better prepared and more mature than others when they get started teaching, he reminded me that teaching is a path of direct experience. Everyone starts too soon. He continued saying, “And look, you live in a small town and you probably know as much as anyone there and certainly enough to help other people.” In retrospect, I think he was really saying, “You study with me and I am the greatest and so you know clearly know more than others.” He was an arrogant type and so this statement probably had more to do with him than anyone else in town teaching or practicing. But I digress.
Then he gave me some advice to get going. He told me:
1. Make sure you have a teacher you study with and who you can ask questions, and
2. Do not teach poses you can not do.
The first piece of advice served me well for many years. Even after I stopped working with this particular teacher, I found great teachers who helped me with my practice and answered my many questions. If you know me, you know I consider myself more of a student and practitioner than I do a teacher. I love teaching and am happy to take the seat whenever I have the opportunity, but I am even happier being the student of knowledgeable, experienced, and insightful teachers, regardless of tradition and even regardless of subject. I totally love learning from good teachers. And while I have developed a lot of confidence in my teaching work over the years, if you are in my classes these days you know I teach from a “we are in it together” perspective more than from an “I know it all” perspective.
I love learning and I think the reason I have stayed the course with yoga for so long is that it satisfies that itch. Whether the subject is anatomy or philosophy, psychology or educational theory, there is always plenty of information available in yoga to challenge, inspire, and inform my life with greater clarity. And while it has been over a decade since I have had a relationship with a primary teacher and enjoyed the intimacy that provides, I have found ways to keep learning and growing. Collegial sharing, seminars, classes, yoga friendships and online courses give me plenty of ideas, experiences, and insights to integrate and synthesize on my own mat. Like I said, I like to learn and continuing to learn is my responsibility, not my teacher’s obligation. Also, being a student keeps me connected to the vulnerability inherent in the seat of the student and my teaching always suffers whenever I lose that connection.
I have pretty much stuck to the second piece of advice as well. While I do believe that as we gain experience we can teach some poses we can not do, my teaching is best on those poses I know well inside my own body and that are a regular part of my own practice. And while he was giving me specific advice as a new teacher, I think “teach what you can do” is great advice, in general. I am not good at math, so I don’t teach math. I am marginally competent at piano so even though I love music and appreciate a good concert, I do not teach piano. Same with some yoga poses. And certainly, I have been around long enough to know how to help people who can do some things I can not do, I have the most potency on those principles and poses I know directly. (Also, keep in mind, my teaching style is pretty peak pose and lesson focused and I could see that a different class style could have different parameters.)
And, as many of you know, teaching can help cement understanding and clarify places of confusion. A few years back, I had a conversation with a 14-year old friend of mine who attends an alternative school. When they do teacher-student evaluations throughout the year the students are asked to check a box among the following options: 1.) I do not understand the lesson, 2.) I have questions about the topic, 3.) I understand the material, and 4.) I could teach the information to others. And while this list makes it sound as though 100% understanding always precedes teaching, the truth is that somewhere between option 3 and 4 is a vast expanse that the work of articulating the concepts to others helps bridge. So many times, teaching helps me know what what I know and of course, see more clearly what I do not know. So, as always, lots of grey area here.
In addition to the sage advice my teacher gave me in 1999, I have some of my own advice for new teachers beyond some of the more obvious things like don’t have sex with your students (which, based on all kinds of evidence may not be as obvious to some as it is to others) and show up on time, answer your email, return your calls, keep your theme pitch succinct, and start/end your class on time. Here are my top ten pieces of advice which I will expand on in my next few blog entries. (Although, come to think of it, the list I just gave would go along way toward increasing professionalism in our industry.) Anyhoo, my current top ten are:
Remember, the yoga is on your side.
Be a rabbi, not a priest.
Give yourself permission to be what you are— a beginning teacher.
Develop your skills.
Learn people’s names.
Focus more on helping people with their practice than on getting them to come back to your class.
Own your limits.
Have a good therapist.
Have some friends who don’t do yoga.
Make your life yoga, don’t make yoga your life.
Speaking of making your life yoga… here is a clip from an intensive in San Marcos, TX years ago. Enjoy.
