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Spring 2001

NAMASTE,
I received a call from my good friend and colleague, Patricia Walden, the other day. She had just completed teaching a two year teacher training program at her center, The BKS Iyengar Yoga Center of Greater Boston, and she was going to give the students a final talk the next night. She told me that the subject of her talk was "Never forget that the pupil also teaches the Master", and that she wanted to discuss some of her thoughts with me and listen to any ideas I had on the topic. I didn't find it difficult to come up with ideas, since (I think this is true for just about every yoga teacher) I often consider how much I receive and learn from the students.

The first thing that came to mind when Patricia asked was that students continually remind me about how much I don't know. They present problems about which I haven't thought, variations I've never seen, questions to which I don't know the answer. It probably doesn't seem like that to them, since I do know more about the subject than they and more often than not, I can answer their questions and help them with the difficulties they encounter. But yoga is so vast and each person's experience and manifestation of it is so varied; no one can know it all. After many a class, I go back to my practice at home to try to understand something about a problem or question raised by a student. Invariably, I find that the more I learn, the more I learn how much more there is to learn. And so many times it is the students who lead me into avenues I might otherwise never have thought to explore.

That carried me to another thought, which is that through my students, I sometimes discover that I know more than I think I know. Students ask questions and I occasionally hear myself giving an answer that I didn't know was in there. Or a student has a particular problem with a pose and I do an adjustment that I've never done before. It's almost as if, at that moment, I were channeling a more knowledgeable being than myself (doo doo doo doo), someone who knows stuff I don't, or didn't know I did. In its ideal manifestation, the student-teacher interaction has a way of drawing out the best in both the student and the teacher.

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Another thing that I have learned from the students that revolvesaround this business of knowing and not knowing is that much of the time, I have very little idea what any particular student is bringing to class on any given day. Over the years, as I have talked with students in and out of class, they have told me about their physical histories and problems, their family and social relationships, their jobs and financial situations, their goals, dreams, and their aspirations. Add to that the fact that events taking place in their lives at any given moment may be exerting powerful influences on their health, emotions, state of mind, and/or energy level, and it becomes overwhelmingly obvious to me that there is so much more to this complex and ultimately mysterious entity that I call "student" than meets the eye. This realization has led me over time to change my approach to my students, to be less assertive in imposing certain things and more open to allowing them to find their own way at their own pace.

This raises a difficult issue for a teacher: how much to prod a student and how much to back off. Some students need to be energetically nudged along or they will stay stuck at a particular stage. It is not a service to them to simply let them plod along when so much more is possible. Indeed, the teacher has a responsibility to open up and present broader realms of possibilities to the students as they become ready. At other times, though, some students need to slow down, to consolidate what they have already learned, to nurture or restore rather than push ahead. I've learned that by talking with a student and finding out more about her life and how yoga fits into it, I can more often teach in a way that takes the whole person and her present circumstances into account.

One of the wonderful things my students teach me is really something I already know, but lose sight of occasionally: the remarkable power of yoga as a transformational practice. On numerous occasions, I've written here and elsewhere about how yoga has changed my life - nearly every aspect of it. These changes have occurred over years of practice and for the most part have been gradual. But over the span of those years, the cumulative effect has been profound and extensive. Even so, as I see the students come to class for just an hour and a half once a week, I sometimes forget that the power of yoga is working in their lives just as certainly as it does in my life. I am fortunate in that the students are often kind, thoughtful, and enthusiastic enough to write or speak with me to tell me just how much their classes and practice mean to them and how much yoga has affected their life. Even if that one class per week is the extent of their yoga practice, something is happening. And it shows in their posture, their demeanor, in the light in their eyes.

I guess the biggest thing I learn from my students (and it's something I learn over and over again) is that we - the students and I, all of us - are truly connected in the deepest and most profound way: in the very essence of our being. They show it to me in the dance that is a yoga class. They reveal it in the exchange of a word or a touch or a glance. They unveil it in the light that comes from them as they reach some place deep within themselves and we recognize that place together. We acknowledge it together formally as we end each class by saying "Namaste", recognizing and honoring that place in each where we are One. But that Oneness is also there in the poses, the adjustments, in putting the props away; it is there on the way home, when we eat, when we get into bed; it is there when we arise the next day to practice, or not; when we carry what we have learned to the day's tasks, or we don't; it is there when we remember to remember, and even when we forget. My students teach me that, in this life, we are all teachers and we are all students. I am grateful for the teachings, for the students, and for the teachings the students give to me.

       

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