About a month ago, I went to a class, based on a friend’s recommendation, with a teacher I had never studied with before. I rolled out my mat and sat quietly as I waited for the teacher to enter the room. When she did, she sat down in front of the class, and immediately started chatting casually with the group of 30 or so students—some of whom she obviously knew well— about a recent and quite personal experience she’d had that had really enraged her.
The story went on for a while, as I waited for the class to begin. I felt a bit uncomfortable with her incredibly chatty tone, partially because I was not “in the club”, partially because I felt weird about hearing such personal details of a stranger’s life, and partially because the lesson she was imparting was about owning one’s anger rather than practicing forgiveness.
I didn’t feel like a student in an asana class, but rather like the underdog in a boxing match getting a pep talk from my coach about how to get back in the ring and kick some butt.
I figured she’s let it go once class started, but she didn’t. She related every pose we practiced—even seated postures—to being forceful and putting up boundaries. I was trying to focus on my practice, but I had a lot of difficulty with it. I had entered the class feeling peaceful, and left feeling agitated and even a bit angry—I caught her bitter bug.
Obviously, I played a part in the discomfort I was feeling. I allowed her state to affect mine and wasn’t able to stay grounded as much as I would have hoped. And I also know that all teachers have bad days, and I may have caught her on one of hers. But the whole event brought up some questions for me about how much teachers should be sharing with students, both in a classroom setting like this one, and even on a one-on-one basis. Is there harm in this kind of oversharing? Is it a teacher’s obligation to adhere to certain boundaries between herself and her students in order to protect the sanctity of the teacher-student relationship? Or do you think that letting down boundaries is a way for teachers to better relate to students and allow a deeper transmission to occur?
Write in and tell us what you think!
I’m on the fence for that one. When I teach, I try to relate my personal experiences, to why I practice yoga. I sometimes encourage the students to focus on something “bad”, with the intention of breathing through it and letting it go with the practice. I personally don’t believe in agitating the student throughout the practice so that they are more aggravated when they leave my class. In this instance I believe it was a good exercise at controlling your own emotions and holding true to your inner self. It’s easy to mediate/yoga when your are right with the world, sometimes we need external distractors to help us go inside and leave the outside, out.
It’s hard to tell from your story whether it was too much – owning anger is not inferior to practicing forgiveness, and some teachers are excellent at this type of chatty yoga class. On the other hand, many are not, and feel they are self-appointed ’emotional leaders’ in their community whether they have true insight or are just overly focused on number 1.
From the little you did say, about feeling you were getting a pep talk – sounds like she may have been projecting her feelings onto the class, which is, well, what it is. A lot of teachers ‘appropriate” emotional authority based on their position at the front of the room. A LOT of us. And the vast majority have no clue how that sits with students – students are often far more experienced and wiser in the game of life than their yoga teacher, and as teachers that needs to be a big consideration when we decide to launch into a theme.
Thanks for bringing up a juicy issue. A great topic for further reflection 🙂
What Amy said and I think it was Judith Lasater that wrote (said) that ” A yoga class is a support group for those that can’t do yoga.” As a yoga “teacher” I have added the old adage “Those that can’t do, teach”. The yoga teacher may have been too chatty, some may have gotten turned off by the talk. The yoga teacher (here comes the judgement :-)) “should” not have been too chatty or they would risk losing a chance to reach the “asana monsters”.
BUT, we all (hopefully) know what we know and teach how we teach and if that doesn’t work, well, students find other teachers and maybe we and they learn in the process.
We all have to be careful, our stories are very interesting to us and not quite as interesting to others…
Thank you for this thread.
I agree that this topic is a tricky one – some teachers are wonderful at relating a story and turning it into a class (John Friend may be the best at this), and some use their classes as a soapbox, which I don’t think works. I agree with both Amy and David, that many yoga teachers do seem to appoint themselves as emotional experts, when in fact, we are all learning about this life each and every day, and we should not presume to have answers for anyone else. When I am tempted to bring an anecdote to class, I try to be very careful to offer it as one perspective, something to think about and leave it at that. I try to say things like, “From a yoga perspective, this is how we might think about it . . .”
Ultimately, bringing the real world into yoga class is important, because the real world is exactly what the practice is there to help us understand. I believe it helps students to see these connections. For instance, this week I brought a few examples of items I’d seen in the media about how profoundly the Internet is affecting our culture, our brains, our very lives, and how this may be part of the draw that yoga has for so many people over the past 10-15 years. We are seeking a way back to our visceral selves and away from our virtual selves. I have strong feelings about the topic, but I tried to offer the information as just that: information, with just a little editorializing. I try to limit that sort of thing to every now and then, to avoid having people feel that they are going to hear a lecture first, and then some forced set of instructions about how to relate the theme to every pose. The connection between asana, breath and life has to come about organically, as each of us practice, in class or on our own.
The thing that has helped me the most in terms of how personal to get in class: experience. I’ve gotten better at it over the years. Thanks for this wonderful, reasonable blog!
How interesting! I don’t teach yoga but have had found that my own anger (and owning my own anger) are things that needed my love and attention. Nearly always more love and attention than I cared to give them. In any event, this story reminded me of something that Thich Nhat Hanh says, “We are mothers of our anger and we have to help our baby, our anger, not fight and destroy it. Our anger is us and our compassion is also us.”