The Private Yoga Teacher and the Response to Pain‪.‬ Yoga One to One with Jeffry Farrell

In this episode, we discuss how to respond when a student comes into the session with pain or an injury. Or what happens when the teacher experiences pain and injury.

We'd love to hear what you think! What did you get out of this episode? What else would you like us to talk about? Email jeff@jeffrykfarrell.com, or go to http://www.yogaonetoone.com and click the "contact" link.

Below is not a full transcript, but a recap of the conversation:

Injury, pain, tears, weaknesses, limitations, failures are all part of what we will address. It's inevitable.

Injury is humbling.

Pain is an honest teacher. With pain, we've entered a land that is a healing territory. A land of empathy. An opportunity to learn. It teaches us.

To experience pain is an invitation to a path of humility.

To be humble is to take time. To take an honest look at oneself. A time for self-examination. Svadaya. We see our own limitations, and our abilities, dreams, desires. We can develop a respect for who we are. It leads to a greater understanding of our own identity, and acceptance of our own nature. Our own dignity. When you have that awareness, nobody can take it away from you. These injuries lead us back to stillness. When you're going through injury, you do experience a range of emotions. Not necessarily reactive to that event. Sometimes the emotions are not separate from the event. They lie deep within us and the injuries give us the opportunities to recognize that and perhaps to let them go. To truly make changes within ourselves. And if we can work with that understanding for ourselves, that's what we want to take in our work with other people. Because an injury is physical, but the yoga practices observe us as physical, emotional, mental, soul beings. The patterns in each of those levels become present to us in our injury.

If we address it on that level, with patience, and a kind of abiding understanding that lets yourself feel what you're feeling, that's when real change and healing can occur.

Some people connect pain with pity. And there are people who completely deny it and go the other direction. And we have to be conscious of what this person is going through, and we want to bring them to a present-moment focus. Because sometimes a diagnosis becomes wrapped up in a person's identity. It is this sense of identification will illness, disease, diagnosis that is in itself a serious problem. We are not those things. We are not truly limited by those things.

Sometimes healing does not mean that you get better on a physical level necessarily. But it does mean that you can make an adjustment on some profound level in your life.
When someone comes in with pain, illness, injury, a diagnosis, etc., you want to come to a present-moment focus with them. You and them together. It involves trust. While you don't want them to complain about it, you do want them to know that you are interested in what they are experiencing. Invite them to share with you. And we invite them to take a breath and release. Not to deny their experience, but to let it be less grasped. To let go of their expectations, their to-do list, the rest of their day or week or season. Remind them that those programs run in their minds and we invite them to let that go. Let that go and be present. So we begin to loosen some of that identification with suffering. Suffering and pain are not the same. Pain is inevitable. The suffering is sometimes inevitable. We invite the observation of pain, but not the anticipation of it. We invite the recognition of presence. When we begin to self-examine and find further connections with our pain, it's amazing how the suffering becomes present and we begin to unlock it. We can begin to unlock the emotional content. The mental content and the future concern. It's important for the yoga teacher to release judgement, heighten discernment, and cultivate curiosity.