A student recently asked me what the most rewarding thing was about being a yoga teacher. This gave me a chance to pause and reflect on what it actually means being a ‘yoga teacher’. When I first decided to do a teacher training, teaching was the last thing on my mind (or so I told myself!). I merely wanted to immerse myself into in-depth study of yoga anatomy, philosophy, meditation, pranayama and asana. But during the teacher training (click here if you want to find out about an excellent course!) I understood that a good teacher is by far and foremost a good student – because a teacher studies his or her students. And although we have to rely on teaching to groups in a class situation, there simply is no cookie-cutter method for each student and one asana may be taught to a student differently compared to another. For me, teaching is also always a continuation of my yoga practice – not the asana practice but the practice of loving kindness: extending love and attention to each and every one of you! As such, it is a continuous study and those of you who watched the movie at the last Philosophy & Movie Night may recall Georg Feuerstein (one of the most learned yoga scholars of this century) saying that “if you are not prepared to learn from your students, you should not teach yoga, as yoga is by far and foremost study.”
As such, I would like to thank all of you for being such great teachers to me – in every class I learn something new from you; you enhance my practice and my teaching and for this I thank you.
Namaste,
Evelyn
