Learning is Not Linear
Years ago, I was teaching at a big local studio and was traveling a lot to teach out of town so I often arranged substitutes for my classes. One weekend, when I couldn't find a substitute from the teachers who normally attended my classes, I put in a sub-request on the studio teacher's message board. (Yep, that was before social media and specialized Facebook groups for such things, but I digress.)
When I returned home, I asked how class went. One of the regular students replied, "She was very lovely and I enjoyed her class, but she really needs some help with her shoulders in chaturanga!"
This little memory clearly explains why finding subs for my classes was not always easy AND how classes where demonstration, explanation, and the exploration of general biomechanics are empowering. I think alignment-oriented approaches are empowering, not because the teacher whispers encouraging sweet-nothings from the front of the room (although I do love a good pep talk), but because the process of learning how we work and how that function interfaces with poses helps us see and feel more clearly. In such classes, "doing" is in relationship with "understanding." Put another way, the body and the intellect are engaged consciously and cooperatively.
Yep, I know there is a shadow side and alignment-oriented yoga has plenty of problems. It can seem picky. It takes a while to build a matrix of understanding and the details can overwhelm. Alignment approaches seem to be an imposition of shape that is at odds with capacity, creativity, and agency. Alignment teachers talk too much. Demonstrations and explanations take people out of their "flow." Sometimes experienced students have to wait (which can feel like wasting time) while a new student asks the questions the now-experienced student has already had answered. All of those shadows (and more) are real.
But, it seems to me that the shadows live more on the surface-level than in the depths. In the depths, every student in class is being trained to know as much as the teacher. In the depths, the protocols eventually allow one to break free of external commands and have a direct, felt-sense of one's interior. In the depths, the teacher-student relationship is a reciprocal function where both parties are learning and supporting the growth of the other.
I was recently listening to an FRC trainer talk about how his goal for the clients at his gym is that they know more than any trainer in a 100-mile radius. I wouldn't have said it that way, but it did bring this little story to my mind from fifteen years ago. And, in case you were wondering, the lovely substitute teacher in my story later became a student and a friend. She now owns her own studio and is running her own teacher trainings. All these years laters, we are still talking poses, principles, life, love and the worthwhile struggles inherent in the full-hearted endeavor of walking the path.
The thing is, we all start somewhere. And even the best of educations occur slowly over time and are both limited and liberated by factors too numerous to name. My own understanding of alignment, good movement principles, and what is safe and unsafe continues to change and be refined by personal, professional, and collegial experiences. Learning, like life, is not linear. Father Richard Rohr talks about how we move through stages of order (rigid adherence to dogma) and then disorder (disillusionment, breakdown, doubt) and then re-order (rebirth, reconfiguration, re-creation, new eyes to see.) Whether it is our life of faith, our friendships/relationships, or our beloved asana protocols, growth and movement seems to require that things work, stop working, and if we do not get stuck in grief, anger, cynicism, nihilism and/or suspicion, they can work again. Sometimes the re-ordering is external and my outer life changes. Sometimes the re-ordering is an internal shift that transforms how I see the very same situation. More often than not, re-order is some combination of both forces, some alchemy of the inner and the outer that is much richer and deeper than anything I could plan on my own.
So, here we are in the darkest nights of the year and Bellingham is covered in snow. I am gonna get this entry posted and then plan a boring, detail-oriented, alignment class focusing on shoulder flexion and hip extension. (It’s a back-bending week in Christina Sell Yoga Land.) Whether your life is perfectly ordered, messy and falling apart, or slowy knitting itself back together, I wish for you hope, light, and the grace of good company.
Keep the faith.
More soon.
And if you made it this far, you are rewarded by my reminder that we start a new cohort for a 300-hour Teacher Development program in February. I am excited about the curriculum and the people who have already registered. Please let me know what questions you have if you are considering joining us.
