How to Find a Yoga Teacher (#42)

''How to find a good yoga teacher?  How do you find a teacher that you trust, and can generate a connection with? Not only that, but find a teacher that does not see themselves in a position of power and does not have your monetary value as student in their ’business’ as a priority?" 

In this episode Mark and Rosalind talk about this most basic of questions, along with the even more basic questions of why we would even want a yoga teacher, and what that is anyway. 

Some aspects we cover:

- The origins of yoga as a practice of mutual respect and care for others and the community, without authority and power.

- the change in student-teacher relationships to power dynamics and business interest as the norm

- The three qualifications of a good yoga teacher according to Krishnamacharya.

- Cultism in spiritual practice; how to sense someone who is driven by social hierarchy, power and money. 

- The use of knowledge as a means to create seniority and power in the modern world of spiritual practice. And the contrasting experience had by Mark with his teachers Krishnamacharya and Desikachar.

- “Yoga is not a salvation cult”. A good teacher should not be promising any method or secret knowledge that will get you to where you think you want to go. Any promises of this nature should be treated with caution as the promise is most likely more of a product to be sold than a spiritual practice.

- A conversation about the ironic inflexibility of modern yoga, how it pushes people into predefined patterns regardless of the differences between individuals, and how this is a reflection of the patterning seen in modern society.

- What to look for: the breath as THE central element of asana practice. The unity of body, mind and breath must be present from the first moment of the yoga lesson, yet is often not given precise or any attention in modern yoga teaching.

- “You don’t do yoga, yoga does you”. Participating in the flow of life and being in the moment, as opposed to using spiritual practice to try and get somewhere you think you need to go, and how a good teacher can help thwart the latter tendency.

- Yoga as a method to release the mind from habitual thought. A symptom of modern living that affects most people in negative ways. Yoga can be a way to free yourself of unnecessary thought and be in the world's beauty.

To find out if we know a good teacher near you, please email studio@heartofyoga.com

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