from controlling students to centering them

I began my teaching career in the college classroom, en route to my PhD in English literature. Every semester, I wrote a syllabus and judged my success as a teacher on my students’ performance: did they understand my assignments? Did they discern and achieve the criteria I’d set for them?

Those standards carried with me as I moved into teaching yoga. For at least the first half of my two-plus-decades teaching yoga, I came into class thinking I needed to stick to the agenda and direct a performance. If I did my job “right,” all the students would be in lockstep, following my careful cueing to the letter. That was what I figured was success.

Then my own yoga practice kicked in and showed me this wrong-seeing approach was causing suffering for my students, and for my career as a yoga teacher.

Now when I look out in the studio and see everyone doing something different, I celebrate. That’s how I know my message has really landed: every student in the room is paying attention to what they need from their practice. By centering students’ agency and reminding them of their own main character energy, we help students progress toward connection, union, yoga.

And that’s how you become (almost) everyone’s favorite yoga teacher: by remembering it’s not about you. It’s always about the practitioner.