We all have certain expectations of certain people. Teachers should love children, policemen should never break the law, pilots shouldn’t be afraid of heights. Yoga teachers should be flexible, skinny, healthy, calm, happy and enlightened, right?!
The perfect Crow pose
First let me apologize for not posting anything for such a long time. My excuse is very lame: I didn’t have time. Let me rephrase that: I didn’t TAKE time.
Starting a business is hard and takes a lot of time and energy. If you want to survive you have to dedicate all your free time to work. However, when you are doing something you love there is basically no difference between work and pleasure. This might sound nice. If you do what you love then everything is pleasure, right?
Not exactly. It’s pretty easy to get trapped and all of a sudden it’s all you think or talk about, and you are unable to disconnect, to relax. At least this was the case with me, and it sometimes still is. But I am working on it 🙂
Letting go of expectations
Many people (including me) have a certain image in their minds about how a yoga teacher should look like, act like, live and react to life situations. I am the first one who is going to judge a yoga teacher if he or she eats meat, because of my personal experience: if you really follow the path of yoga then you know that non-violence towards other beings is one of the first steps. But on the other hand, I am often reacting to people and situations in a very violent way. Yes, I still have a lot to work on 😊
Many of my students see me as the calmest person in the world, who lives in peace and harmony and loves everyone 😀 I might even look like that sometimes in the yoga class, because I do feel at peace when I am doing what I love the most: teach yoga. But I am only human, when I leave the class I go to my everyday problems, I also have to pay the bills, I also struggle to make it through the month, I have to deal with relationships, I am stressed, I too have my dark side, I too have a problem finding time for my personal yoga practice, I don’t always have the best reactions to people/situations, I make so many mistakes I stopped counting, sometimes I eat a whole bag of cookies, I can be mean to people, and I too have to work on improving myself every single day. But you know what? I am aware and I am doing my best. And that is what matters.
Trying to be perfect kicks you out of balance. (The Falling Crow pose 😂)
So to everyone who thinks yoga teachers (or anyone else) should be perfect (a note to myself too): we are all doing our best, in the way we know best. Yoga teachers are not here to show perfection, but to let others know we are all on the same boat, to motivate and inspire, and to be the best example they can be.
Being the change we want to see in the world. Getting better at the yoga poses is just a nice side effect 😉
Namaste.
Nush
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