Does Teaching Love you Back?
I recently came across two questions that have me thinking. In Big Magic Elizabeth Gilbert attributes them to Robin Wall Kimmerer. Kimmerer asks about nature. Gilbert asks them of your creative craft.
I’ll ask them of your teaching: Do you love to teach? and Does your teaching Love you back?
I already know, somewhere deep inside you love teaching yoga. You wouldn’t do it if you didn’t - because, let’s be honest, the perks aren’t so great. Very little pay and no benefits all for working on evenings, and/or weekends and touching peoples’ sweaty bodies.
Heck yeah! that’s exactly what my parents dreamed for me when they told me I could be anything as a little girl in the 80s. I jest. My parents are happy with my choice to teach yoga - not because I don’t make millions - but because I love it so much.
The second question is more interesting to me - Does your Yoga Teaching Love you back? You love it. You are in a relationship with it… does it love you back?
This question makes me consider what a loving relationship brings into life. A loving relationship brings joy. It brings personal growth and development, and helps you connect with your heart instead of your ego. It challenges and inspires you to bring greatness into it. And it affirms you - that you are loved for being you.
If that is a loving relationship - then yes, I do think teaching yoga loves me back.
The hard part is that there are challenges inherent in teaching yoga. And it’s very easy for teachers to get stuck in the challenges. Maybe you get irritated with particular students. Or you get so afraid of a part of teaching that you decide that you’re “not good at it” and never to do it again.
A loving relationship asks you to grow and evolve, not to stay the same. The challenges are the invitation - the loving invitation - to do that. The irritations are the doorway into personal and professional growth. You are being invited to step into more and more greatness. Not just as a teacher, but as a human being.
Being a yoga teacher committed to honing your craft is like being a stone tossed in the ocean. With every wave you are smoothed. Every loving caress of the sea softens you until your rough edges disappear. Finally the ocean has loved all the rough bits off and all that is left is your deeply refined craft of meeting peoples bodies, minds and Hearts in the great dance of yoga on the mat.
Do you teach yoga (or something else)? I’d love to hear the ways your teaching loves you back. Please leave a comment below. And if you want some support in honing your teaching please sign up for a coaching call.