What it means to be a certified Iyegnar Yoga Teacher

I just got the Iyengar Certification Manual in the mail. "The first step to deciding whether or not to go up for assessment," my teacher told us, "is to read the manual." This is what I learned... To become a certified Iyengar yoga teacher you have to pass your Introductory I and II assessments. Only then can you call your self an Iyengar teacher. The process takes about two years of preparation (or more) after you have already graduated from a certified two year teacher training program and requires a commitment that is not unlike one you might make to complete a Master's degree. Until I become certified, I consider myself an "apprentice" teacher in the Iyengar system although this is my made up term and not something you will find in the manual! During the two years preparing for assessment, I will study weekly with my mentoring teacher, Peentz Dubble, and also assist in her level I classes. I will also attend a monthly workshop, led by Peentz, on "Assisting and Adjusting in the Iyengar Method." I will be part of a study group with other "apprentice" teachers getting together monthly to discuss yoga philosophy and primary actions for the over seventy asanas (poses) we will be responsible for knowing. (70!!) In addition to these asanas, which we must be able to teach and perform correctly and systematically, we are asked to know their Sanskrit and English names, be grounded in yoga philosophy and have a basic understanding of the major muscles, systems, and bones of the body. (There are about eleven books on the syllabus which we are responsible for reading in part or on the whole.) After going through teacher training, it became clear to me that 1. I wanted to teach yoga and 2. that I wanted to prepare myself for Iyengar certification two things I wasn't sure of until near the mid-point of the training. The reason I want to prepare for assessment is because I want to be the best teacher I can for my students and I cannot keep learning what is a massive and profound subject without the mentoring of a senior teacher a community of practitioners. Why I want to prepare for assessment then is to deepen my own understanding and devotion to yoga for myself and those I teach. My own practice would not be as strong without the commitments to practice I need to make for my students and in obligation to my teacher. These commitments come from a deep devotion I have for yoga in its entirety.

Coming into Aliveness

Why do we practice? It is a question to consider when you bring yourself to the mat each day (or not as the case may be!) The answer, for me, has changed over the years. At first, I continued to practice because it felt good. I persisted because I wanted to get better at it, take on more advanced poses, build my stamina and strength. I wanted to look like my yoga teachers, elegant, long limbed, slim. During pregnancy and then the mothering of a young child, when any time to myself was rare and precious, I practiced when I could just to maintain what I had established and still because it felt good. And I was making new friends in my yoga classes. Recently the reason I practice has changed again as I have been able to devote more and more of myself to practice. Now my practice comes from the longing to turn inward, to still the fluctuations of my wandering mind, to find a still point in the swirl of life. I practice now to find what is unchanging within me (in us all), to strengthen and deepen that most intimate of connections with myself and through this to be connected more clearly and deeply with others. It is in that place of stillness I become open to and aware of my aliveness..through my practice I come into aliveness.

Spiritual Impulse

Rereading Donna Farhi's book "Bringing Yoga to Life" where she writes, "Whether we are hooked on food, alcohol, drugs, sex, money, work, or fame, the impulse to lose ourselves in these things can be seen as a spiritual impulse...We only have to read the works of people recovering from additions to see that behind the trappings of disease lies a mystical yearning that is as authentic and urgent as that of any pilgrim. Somewhere underneath bingeing, starving, exercising, drinking, hallucinating, climaxing, and purchasing, we are desperately seeking a way home to our self." Seen in this way, our harmful habits, compulsions, and addictions come from a deep desire to know home, a still sheltered place in the storm, where we experience belonging, loving kindness, unwavering acceptance and attention. These things we long for do not exist in the material world but because we live in a culture that tells us otherwise, we can get laywaid on our journey home by the siren's call to purchase love and affection in a bottle, through an exercise program, a promotion at work, or the internet. But like the siren's call, our attempts to fill our spiritual urgings through these materials means can only lead to dissatisfaction and depletion because spiritual hunger is fed through an inward journey. For at its most profound and basic, the spiritual impulse is to experience the most intimate of relationships possible in this life which is with the inner self. As my yoga practice invites me to draw inward (pratyahara), what I find is not always easy to bear. Being truly (satya) intimate with myself, I am learning, does not come if I only practice this intimacy when I am feeling my most composed. On the contrary, deep self-intimacy comes when I can bring compassion, kindness, and openness to the very feelings I feel most disdain and shame for. Then the experience of my inner self become rich and full. When I can bear what feels "groundless" in Pema Chodron's words, when I can enter that place of not knowing, confusion, despair, or pain with gentleness (also what Peman Chodron asks us to practice) then I find a quality of self-presence that is welcoming, still in the storm, loving, attentive, and accepting. I find my way home.

Unfolding, grief, and love

The local paper is chronicling an account of how a local family faced the challenge of living without a daughter and her child after their murder 20 years ago (GazetteNet.com). It is a brave thing to do to share such a deeply painful story publicly but a gift to all of us. In this intimate disclosure are many lessons about healing and caring for each other that usually remain hidden between us; our terrors, depth-less griefs, our loneliness, abandonment, and little hopes. How much we need each other becomes apparent in this story as well as how the losses that thread throughout our lives connect us together in ways we can forget. In her healing, the mother returned again and again to a place she called "the pit" which was cold and dark, lined with cement. "It was colder than a walk-in refrigerator. The floor was flat, with steps on two sides and no railings...in the intense cold, her movements were slowed. As her spasms of grief lessened in time, she found she could slowly climb the steps without falling back, the air warming as she rose." In her journey of grief, we are reminded of how slow and uneven the path is. Her therapist writes, "At some point the line (inside of the pit) would have run long enough for deeper healing to become possible, for a person to recover enough to do more than hold themselves together. But first, they get a little worse. People shouldn't mistake that flat line for recovery or adjustment." She told the woman, "I think you've gone as far as you will with getting better quickly. Now you're going to get better more slowly. You're not going to be at the bottom though it may feel like you are. Changes are going to come more slowly now." We need to help each other, in so many ways, to find patience with these necessary changes which move, at times, so slowly (and backwards) that we can feel so abandoned and lost, the grief implacable, the darkness never ending. Unlike the messages we receive (every microsecond) from the world around us to move faster, better, with more efficiency and progress, our inner lives unfold at a slower more uneven, natural, and organic pace. Cut off from the lessons of the geese, the wildflowers blooming after winter ice, the sun rising ever so slightly a minute earlier each day, we loose touch with our humanity, our true purpose in life, which is to both unfold and touch more deeply our inner soul. And to do this - to reach the warmer air - we need each other's help.

Off the Mat 1

I am learning in yoga class how easily I can get "offended" by others actions. I take things too personally. It can be crowded in class and hard to find a space enough to stretch myself into position. Lines can form as students grab extra blankets, chairs, and bolsters. Props can run out leaving me feeling quite perturbed, left out, and neglected.

"Take responsibility for yourself and others," our teacher tells us in class. Which means, take up only the space you need, make room for others, help your neighbor put away props, and watch where you put your foot. Being very attentive to where your body is in space is part of our practice. Through this I see how difficult it is for me to translate an instruction into action, "I though I was lifting my chin, straightening my arm, twisting at the ribs, making space for my neighbor."

In taking responsibility for myself and others in class, I see how many times I, in contrast, expect others to care for me. How I can feel offended when someone "takes up too much of my space", puts a foot too close to my chin, grabs the blanket I took down from the shelf. I do these things as well when I am tired, frustrated, angry, off-centered and without care to how it makes my neighbors feels. When my first reaction is to grasp at things, space, attention more tight in class, I am trying now to practice more graciousness and in this way find more ease and compassion, lightness in my body, in my life.

It is a practice I am learning to bring to my life off the mat. I try to leave early for appointments so I don't have to hurry in the car and feel the need to drive through the crosswalk, to let another car pass, to slow down when approaching a light. I notice more now how others make my way easier as well, slowing down when I am wanting to cross, letting me take a parking space, holding a door. It is a way to care for ourselves and others, to not interpret others actions as a personal affront, to find a way towards kindness to myself, to others.

I practice yoga

This has been my mantra lately.

When the dark pull of longing might take me away from myself I remember, "I practice yoga."

When I feel lost, numb, afraid, I tell myself, "This is my yoga practice."

When waves of sadness wash over me, "This to is my yoga."

I am breaking open to something new in my life and it can hurt. My practice offers me a way into the pain, the emptiness whose contours I touch, gently with compassion and in this way find spaciousness, freedom, choices.

In our backbend practice this week (up again and again and again our teacher urges us) I found a wide bright expansive landscape inside. Like the view from a mountain top on a clear day, all before me appeared with clarity, equanimity, poise.

"This is my practice," to remember this spaciousness even as storm clouds gather, the horizons thicken, to welcome the heavy rain into my dry soil.

My practice is yoga.

Why We Practice?

My teacher asks this of us from time to time.

Lois Steinberg, a Senior Iyengar teacher answered this way, "For joy and presence."

Here are some responses from others in my class:

For...Inner peace, Quiet, the Soul, Flexibility, Strength, Compassion, Self-reflection, Equanimity.

I am trying to practice every morning, with devotion, with focus (dhayana). It is a commitment I have long sought but which has eluded me. Over the years I have had a home practice; sometimes with the radio on, sometimes just a dog pose and one leg stretch. Over the past two years, now that my child is older and I have time in the morning, I have begun a more regular practice. But it has still been one that can lack devotion, focus, my loving attention. It has gotten repetitive.

But, now, I am letting go of thinking about having a more focus, engaging, concentrated practice and I am doing. Having an intention to practice is a first step but I find I need something to fuel that intention; especially on cold winter mornings when it is still dark when I rise!

Something more to get me up and to the mat, more than strength, a body that looks and feels "good", a nimble back; all things that may or may not be depending on the day. Something that is unchanging, dependable, reliable.

That something more I have found to fuel my intention, at least for now, is myself, quiet, calm, penetrated by a warm clear inner light; my soulself who is inside waiting for the muddy waters to settle with as much yearning to meet me as I have to meet her.