September 2026

Happy September, everyone!

The 2025–26 300-hour online teacher training program ended on Sunday. We had a fantastic group of students from across the globe and a brilliant faculty whose expertise made for a robust offering. I know we all learned a lot and, if the past is prologue, the learning will continue as each of us integrates the lessons of the year and makes them our own. Like any feast, we need time to chew on things and digest them before assimilating what nourishes us and eliminating what doesn't. The formal training is over, but the next phase is only beginning.

I have been leading teacher trainings since 2006, and the year-long format remains one of my favorites. While a year-long commitment can feel daunting for many reasons, the extended time provides a supportive framework for learning from the program content and, perhaps more importantly, from the experiences life brings over the course of a year. Sometimes the learning feels directly related to the training. Other times, simply paying closer attention to life life-ing initiates the growth.

I know that, for me, it has certainly been a year.

One year ago, I was dealing with a painful hip injury that revealed fairly severe underlying arthritis and set a significant life review in motion. As I traversed that terrain, I reassessed my professional life, clarified some of my deepest longings, initiated new courses of study, and leaned heavily on the inner and outer resources I have cultivated throughout my life.

I am happy to report that my hips are working well and remain largely pain-free, so I have delayed what once seemed like an imminent hip replacement. One year later, I have hit a few PRs in the gym, successfully incorporated a few runs back into my week, and returned to an asana practice that feels as good as it has in quite some time. If you know me, I am sure you know that recovering some of my athleticism makes me very happy.

At the same time, the temporary loss of my athleticism created a huge opening. Among other things, the experience reminded me just how much I enjoy teaching yoga.

Have you ever thought about breaking up with someone, only to have them break up with you first? Or maybe you wanted to quit a job and got fired before you could turn in your resignation. For many years, I have lived with the dull ache of professional ennui as my interests and capacities changed, the yoga industry changed, and the world at large continued to shift. I fantasized about pursuing a different line of work, even as I carried on with my business, did a reasonably good job, and continued to enjoy the actual work of teaching. The questioning usually got noisiest in the wee hours of the morning or while I scrolled through my Instagram feed. (Perhaps some of you can relate.)

When I became unsure about how I would continue teaching, however, the situation changed. It suddenly seemed like yoga might be breaking up with me before I had decided whether I wanted to break up with yoga. Somewhere in that uncertainty, I rediscovered my gratitude for teaching and the joy I experience when I have the opportunity to do it.

My mentor says that one of the shadow sides of teaching is that, over time, the work may stop providing the same level of personal satisfaction it offered in the beginning. Ideally, teachers continue to learn and grow. Even when we have the good fortune to teach students who grow alongside us for many years, new students continually enter the stream. Bridging the distance between a student's entry point and a teacher's growing edge can prove challenging. No matter how long we teach yoga or how deeply we dive into its philosophy and practices, we are still gonna need to explain what "take a wide stance" means to someone. Those explanations thrilled me when I started teaching almost thirty years ago. The very same lessons have fallen short of the thrill zone for quite some time now.

So, as a teacher, I have to keep growing. And I also have to keep reaching back.

To do both, I need interesting personal pursuits to keep learning and expanding myself. I also  need a frame around my work that is  large enough to hold meaning and grounded enough to keep grandiosity in check. At some point, in situations such as these, teachers may need different work altogether. For now, fully engaging my own learning and reframing my work more spaciously have quieted the impulse to make a dramatic professional change.

Not surprisingly, I found tremendous healing through the connections I share  with my students, colleagues, coaches, teachers, and friends.  Without knowing it, they probably taught me the most important lesson of the year: Love is a starting place for spiritual practice, not its result.

I don't become lovable and loved when I have the deepest backbend, the wittiest comeback, or the smartest response to a philosophical quandary. I am lovable and loved now.

I don't become lovable and loved when my diet is perfect, my morning protocol is dialed in, my workout regimen is consistent, and all my practices run like clockwork. I am lovable and loved now.

I don't become lovable and loved when I am perfectly healed, have everything figured out, and have smoothed away all my prickly edges. I am lovable and loved now.

Through some mysterious force of Grace, circumstances conspired to give me the exact experiences I needed to see that Love does not depend on my competence, performance, appearance, physicality, or intellectual prowess. Love does not depend on other people understanding me perfectly.  As it turns out, I experience Love most profoundly through connection with others. And, as much as I sometimes wish the terms were different, sharing the pain of being human seems to be one of the ways Love flows into the nooks and crannies within me that need it most. As I so often say, no one can do this work for me, but I cannot do it alone.

If you are reading this, you are part of that wide circle of Love in some form, and I am grateful that you share the journey with me. Let me know what is happening in your own process of being human, where Love feels blocked and where it is flowing freely. Join me online or in person when you can.

Oh, and in case it wasn’t obvious,  if I am lovable and loved without having it all together, so are you.

Keep the faith.

Love,

C