Who's Your Yoga Teacher, Baby?
Ah, America, the land of innovation. You're free to choose. Change it. Dissect it. Try it, you’ll like it…or not. You’re in control. That's the American way.
But does the American attitude work in yoga?
Once upon a time, Yoga was once a very specific, very secret practice designed to bring you to enlightenment. For thousands of years, yoga was for the initiated only. Warning on the box: 
do not try yoga at home.
In the 1890s, yoga made it’s first appearance in America. We approached with caution at first, and sometime around 1970, we embraced it and made yoga our own, sprinkling in American invention, innovation, individuality. The mantra of American yoga: to the people, for the people, by the people.
Now, more than 100 years later, Yoga is the Ben & Jerry’s of American exercise. What's the flavor of the month - Iyengar, Bikram, Ashtanga, Kundalini? How about a nice taste of Anusara or Jivamukti yoga? In a no frills mood? Try Yoga with No Fancy Toppings: Yoga Nidra. Want niche yoga? Try yoga for seniors, yoga for infants, yoga for Moms who wear Manolos. Want yoga chic? Move your body with Rodney Yee, Christie Turlington, Baron Baptiste. Madonna might be in your yoga class today. Or - dream on - Sting.
Yoga for everyone. Yoga round the clock. Yoga here, yoga there, yoga in your underwear. Yay, yoga, yes...?
Just to clarify here: what I am talking about and what most people mean when they say “yoga,” is Hatha Yoga. The Hatha limb on the yoga tree deals with movement of the body and the breath, otherwise known in the west as exercise.
But in fact, hatha yoga is an infintesimal piece of a multi-tiered journey inward to enlightenment known as Yoga.
No conflict here for me. We Americans have done what we always have since the Revolutionary War: take the parts we like and leave out what we deem superfluous and unnecessary.
The problem is, even with all the variations on a good thing, we still want to do every yoga class My Way.
Screw you, yoga teacher.
We want yoga to heal us. We make yoga our New Year’s Resolution – we just don’t like being told how to do yoga, even when we're in yoga class.
Help me, yes, but let me do it my way (which isn’t really working for me – that’s why I’ve come to yoga in the first place).
Take a breath.
Setting goals, getting results, accomplishing tasks – this is how we measure progress in America. Yoga has no such yardsticks.
The goal of yoga if you must have one: do yoga.
Yoga is not about accomplishment any more than life is about getting it done. When was the last time you got an Award for completing your To Do List...or even allowed yourself to feel good about it for more than a split nanosecond?
Give it up. Surrender, Dorothy. Do yoga.
This means following your yoga teacher's instructions.This is an essential part of practicing yoga. Use your American Me to choose the yoga you want to try, the teacher you favor, the yoga clothing you want to flaunt. But when you’re in the yoga room, do yoga. Not because someone is forcing you; but because that’s what you came here for. That's what you’re paying for. You’re not integrating Pilates or aerobics, you're not “feeling” your way through a yoga pose.
Here are your choices: in yoga, you are following your teacher, or standing still. One hundred percent in, or one hundred percent out. Single minded focus.
Your Constitutional Rights may feel violated. But you said you wanted to do yoga. So just do it. The student-teacher relationship is at the essence of yoga.
Guess which one you are?
And when class is over, you can be your old self again; trash talk your teacher at Starbucks and happily check yoga off your To Do List.
You'll be back.
Rhonda Uretzky, E-RYT
Reader Comments (4)
When I came to yoga three years ago, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I thought I was going for exercise. And it is that on the exterior. Yet, as you practice yoga, yoga changes you from the inside out. It is a practice toward 'you'. It is a practice of finding yourself on a deeper level. Surrendering to yourself and most importantly, your teacher. Wherever you practice yoga, that is where you are supposed to be and where you will learn.
Well said, Jane! I had a conversation with somebody recently who was fuming about how "dangerous" hot yoga in a packed room can be and "what is it about our society that we all want to be told what to do?" and I thought, "Wow, I couldn't disagree more." In general, Americans feel free and well, entitled to question instructions and quibble with methodology, even when they have no expertise of their own to draw upon in the area in question.
What I love about hot yoga, and about the Riverflow studio in particular, is that I know my teacher sees me in the healing light of where I'm headed, and refuses to define me within the limitations I've managed to internalize. If I trust my teacher, I will surpass myself. Every class. Every time.
I agree with you both! Who in America wants to be told what to do?? Isn't that one of the *many* challenges hot yoga brings--being told and LISTENING and doing? Every time I find myself developing my own habits in class, one of our trusted Riverflow teachers corrects me and sets me back on track!
The yoga teacher "refuses to define me within the limitations I've managed to internalize"- I love this Mary-Rush and wholeheartedly agree. It is the beauty of the student-teacher relationship at River Flow!