Why I stopped teaching yoga

I stopped teaching yoga in yoga studios after 30 years of doing so. My yoga practice has evolved over the years, as I have, including my evolving ageing body that prefers stillness to a more rigorous movement style of yoga.

I no longer teach classes in a classroom setting partly because classes in modern yoga studios tend to focus mainly on teaching physical asanas.  Plus the evolving yoga studio businesses cater to the fast paced lifestyles offering one hour yoga classes as the ‘norm’. Of course I’m sure there are still yoga studios that offer more in-depth aspects of yoga practice.

Reflecting back, I guess I have never viewed yoga as only a form of physical exercise when yoga is so much more than that. I know that one can impart the other aspects of yoga while teaching asana in a studio class environment, but it started to feel somewhat limiting to continue teaching this way. So I stopped.

Yoga has always been about gaining mastery over the mind-thoughts and emotions and understanding the transient nature of things as one connects to the constancy of an inner stillness and presence that is unchanging. The physical postures are but a small part of helping us to understand the nature of mind and realize our true nature. Yoga asana postures serve to help us move more easily and comfortably into meditative states. 

SAVASANA is an advanced posture in my practice

Savasana, lying on your back, being stillness itself, breathing with awareness of the transient thoughts, sensations and feelings can help us become present to “what is” without needing it to be different. And this is what yoga helps us with; to not be a slave to the mind's entrapments.

This pose is not as easy as it seems. To quiet the mind while lying still through the practice of breath awareness and noticing without reacting to thoughts that come and go can be considered an advanced practice that has nothing to do with being proficient at more advanced postures requiring incredible strength, flexibility and focused concentration. 

To be clear, I don’t have any judgement around wanting to focus on achieving advanced asana mastery, but I personally have always loved the SPACE BETWEEN in my yoga practice and teaching.

The space between one pose and the next

Fortunately I studied yoga in the early 90’s in a style that had us pause after each pose and not move  from one pose into another right away. This has stayed with me through the years of practice and teaching. I’ve practiced many styles but I always respond to the PAUSE and the space between the doings.

YIN

Then I discovered yin style yoga practice with the longer holding and stillness of this practice. It suited my feminine body, my age, my love of stillness. It taught be to embody surrender. Not just on the mat, but off the mat in daily life. And yet even with Yin practice I still practice and teach the pause between each pose.

RETREATS

I bring this kind of yoga into my retreats where we can more easily focus on deepening aspects that help us gain a mastery of mind by observing without needing what’s observed to be different, noticing without attaching or pushing away what arises. 

This is the yoga practice I encourage when I hold retreats for women. We practice yoga asana as a means to open the body, release stresses, rejuvenate tissues and reconnect to the everpresent stillness beneath the busy mind energy.

The retreats always include some form of creativity to engage in more right brain activity and the expanded sense of connection it gives us.

Then there is time in nature and being in harmony with our environment and the land we stand on.

If you’d like to join me on a retreat visit my retreats page HERE

May you be happy, healthy and free,

Namaskar,