A few weekends ago, I returned to Scottsdale, AZ to teach at Yoga Village, an Anusara yoga studio run by Barbara Adams.  I met Desiree Rumbaugh,  John Friend and eventually, a world-wide community of practitioners and teachers from my very humble beginnings taking classes and workshops in Scottsdale over twenty years ago. I felt  happy and more-than-a-bit nostalgic, upon returning to the area.

In each session of my weekend workshop, students I had taught in the first  year of my teaching were in the room, many of whom are now seasoned teachers themselves.  In any given session, I looked out and saw people I had known for twenty years sitting with students I was meeting for the first time. I saw long-time students from my Anusara yoga days and folks I had met since terminating my license to teach Anusara yoga, with whom I have weathered the aftermath of that tumultuous time. ​

As I have written before, I have made just about every mistake in the book as a yoga teacher. My learning curve has been long and pretty steep at times, taking me through the terrain of my own self-centeredness, anger, jealousy, and insecurity, while also  offering me glimpses of the deep humility that lives at the heart of being  able to witness other people grow through yogic principles and practice.  I often joke (although I am 100% serious about it) that God made me a yoga teacher, not because I was so well-suited to the task, but because I needed to live close to the teaching in order to grow into the position I had been given.

In the words of Papa Peter Rhodes, “God doesn’t choose the qualified, he qualifies the chosen.”

How is one chosen to teach yoga? Essentially, we raise our hand and say, “I will help.” ​

The way I see it, we live in dark times and the waters of hope, faith, compassion, personal growth, accountability,  and service are muddied by competing cultural narratives, unexamined psychological patterns, and even larger cycles of nature. If I were God, Supreme Consciousness, The Universe, Spirit, or whatever name you have for the ALL THAT IS, I would look around and  see how much  pain there was, how much oppression, injustice, and fear existed in the hearts of even good people and I would give as many jobs  as I could to anyone willing to  work on the side of Light — be that the light of awareness, the light of generosity, the light of honesty, the light of compassion, the light of well, you get my point. 
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And while every year brings with it a new specialty within the world of teacher training and a new niche of service to explore and in which to  get certified, the path of “getting qualified” of which I am speaking is an experiential training program that anyone interested in helping can enter. Each of us who teaches starts from where we are— full of wounds, projections, hopes, dreams, shortcomings, and talents. And we meet our students where they are, full of the same. ​

One thing I love about getting older is that I am more aware of the long-term game we are playing together than the day-to-day ups and downs inherent in the messy Grace of learning and teaching yoga. Whether our students  practice with us over the long haul or find another teacher with whom to share the journey, whether we are on a personal up or down-swing, the opportunity to live alongside the practice and the teachings is a blessing of Light in a time of darkness. Whether our classes are packed or sparsely-attended, whether we  make a living as a teacher or not, and whether or not we feel resonant with the latest trend in the industry,  each of us raised our hands to help, got chosen, and are spending our days and years  getting qualified.


And that, my friends, is a beautiful thing. ​

Keep the faith.

More soon.

I don’t say “futility” to imply that the pursuit is pointless,  that no progress occurs, or to indicate any measure of disillusionment with my practice and what practicing this way has yielded.  I say “futility” to pierce through the perfectionistic, competency-driven, type-A expectations that drew me to the alignment-based approach in the first place. As I participate sincerely in this exercise of futility called alignment-based yoga, I am using the alignment protocols— no matter how impossible they may be to achieve perfectly— as  a guide. As my guide, these principles give me a mirror upon which to see where I am, where I am not, what is stiff, tight, weak, strong, supple, movable, immovable, and so on within me. I can see my relationship to being both  able and not able. I can see my relationship to understanding and confusion.

​I can see my relationship to preferences, opinions, rationalizations, limits and boundaries.  I can see the ways my body conforms to “common tendencies in the pose” also known  “common misalignments.”  I can see where, in some cases, the protocols simply do not work for me  or my body at a given time and I am beholden to myself, not guiding structures or mental concepts.  As my guide, these principles and structures— so often confused with right and wrong, good and bad, and imposing outer standards— have helped me develop an internalized awareness that is  personal and empowering.

The act of aligning oneself in yoga requires a relationship with one’s attention. And as we tend to the position of the body, muscular recruitment, the energetics of the biomechanical action, the resultant physical, emotional and attitudinal effects, etc.   we are in a field of consciousness that can, over time, open a portal well beyond the shape in which we are taking such an interest.  While all that outer maneuvering  and inner churning is happening, there is another level of possibility that can be found. 

In 2004, I was in Northern  India at an Iyengar yoga school in the mountains. One day our teacher,  Rajiv Chanchani, looked at us and said, “Here we are,  dressed for gym class for an exercise in consciousness.”

Since that time, our gym clothes have gotten a heck of a lot nicer and yet the exercise in consciousness remains the same; the call to attention every bit as potent. When I bring my consciousness to bear on my posture, coupled with  my awareness that I am doing such a thing, I am weaving web much deeper than physical position, perfectionistic expectations, dogmatic compliance or rigid adherence to protocols.  I am placing myself in a stream that says,  “Pay attention because your prana will follow your attention.  And as you watch all those details in your body, watch, feel, sense and come into relationship with who is doing all that watching in the first place.”

So, like that. ​