I just have finished my Teacher Training, and I have realised it is just a beginning and it left me with a lot of questions. What to do now? How to proceed with my learning? What about the subjects we have just touched during TT and I want to go deeper in the subject? I didn’t agree on some points. I didn’t understand other points. I just went through Bhagavad Gita and said: I don’t understand it, I can’t relate to it. I don’t believe in Krishna, in God. Do I have to if I want to be a yoga teacher? Why can’t I understand Gita and everyone says it is a masterpiece - am I maybe not good enough to be a yoga teacher? It started from there. Somehow I ran into this podcast which had so many subjects I wanted to have answer on. I like it mostly because it is not only one point of view. There are varoius type of guests, it is open minded, it gets together traditional and modern approach; it isn’t judgemental, it is conversational, and it gives you the space to form your own opinion. I have a feeling there is one big problem in yoga community today. A gap between modern yoga approach and traditional. And ego and lack of empathy and understanding for each other is the reason why these two approaches cannot find common ground. Traditional yoga teachers are angry with modern “social media yogis” who put fancy asana photos on Instagram and talk about yoga only in term of asana practice. While they, who knows yoga tradition and philosophy don’t have space to share the “real” knowledge with people, since they don’t post fancy photos.
Asana practice, I realised, got even a negative conotation from the point of view of traditional yogis. Like it is the less worthy way of practice. I think that teachers must ask themselves - why is that so? Why are people who are just starting with yoga interested only in fancy photos instead of yamas and niyamas first?
Why they rather want to see a fancy pose then a Gita quote?
Why is West represented like sucha a negative space in yoga world?
We hve to realise that people in the West didn’t grew up in India. This is completly different tradition and culture and people are often lacking any kind of spirituality. Someone like that cannot start learning about yoga like someone in India, with yamas and niyamas. They have to start from something that ia much more close to them and less abstract. Something they can easily relate to and understand. They are used to getting care of their body, they want to look better, to lose weight, to be more flexible. And they are not a gym type of person, neither a runner. Also, they have heard that yoga can relax them - and they are so anxious and stressed out because of their work, study, etc. So, they decided yoga sounds good. Can you imagine this person, for example, bussiness women who works from 8 till 18, has pain in her neck, few pounds more, is under constant pressure on work, comes to a yoga class for the reason to move her body a bit, to relax and maybe get rid of tension in her neck. And a yoga teacher starta to speak about Yamas, Niyamas, chakras, Krishna and how everyone should be vegetarian. She’d probably never come back. She couldn’t relate to it, she have expected some kind of exercise, not a philosophy.
People in the West are so far from their inner self, from any kind of spirituality and it is so normal for them to start with yoga from the point where no one speaks about chakras and 8 steps in the path of yoga. It is ok for them to start from asanas, and it is ok if they just got interested in that because they saw some Instagram yogi doing pincha mayurasana and it motivated her.
We all began from somewhere. I started to practice yoga only to relax and stretch. I thought it was some Buddhistic way of physical practice :D (there was Buddha in zen garden in our studio). And now I am here, learning more about spiritual path, eager tu understand Gita. Some students will want to go further after some time, some of them not. And it is ok! Isn’t yoga supposed to be for everyone? And does it have to be all or nothing approach?
This is the reason why I like this podcast so much. It gives you the knowledge about some traditional and some modern yoga aspects, it doesn’t judge, teacher is open minded, full of empathy and understanding. And also I found further teachers whose approach I like very much, as well some courses, and it gave me some direction what to do next, how to learn, how to feel about myself, how to explore, which questions should I ask myself on my yoga journy. Thank you so much!
