Welcome to the Edge
What is the edge? The edge is a precipice between one place and another. The boundary between what is and what could be. The experience of the edge is often characterized by intensity and extremes. The edge is a place of unknowns and risk, and a place where there is very little clear direction about the next step. It is the space of transition which often leads us to be both excited and afraid. Hopeful for the movement to the next place, and simultaneously terrified about leaving the comfort of the familiar. It seems that we find ourselves on the edge often in our lives. It can emerge during big shifts like the edge of a career or the edge of relationship, but it can also happen with something as seemingly insignificant as the edge of a choice.
It is an intense place to occupy, and often we express that we feel frozen, stuck, unclear, and without direction. So, to stay “safe”, we prolong the process, and hold fast to the familiar and comfortable. We begin to develop a fear and mistrust about the space between, when in truth it is the space of pure potential. This space just outside of the familiar is where we learn to TRUST, to understand that it is all about us, but it is so much bigger than us. The less we cling, the more we can feel supported to make the choices that will lead us to greatest ease on our path. Once we step out into the unknown, the next phase of our lives opens to us. But that first step, for most of us, is the hardest one.
The choice to leave the familiar for what is right or good for our life takes a warrior’s heart. When we take that initial step into the unknown and in doing so, we open a path straight to our center. For so many of us, this is scary. We’ve invested so much time and energy into becoming that we have forgotten our own true being, the unchanging, purposeful, power within.
It is here at the edge of a quiet moment, or a dramatic life change, where we have a choice. We choose to step out into the unknown away from comfort because we sense it will bring us closer to who we really are. Taking this step will bring us closer to who we are becoming.
Friends and family may think we are crazy. Our colleagues might question our sanity. But when we make the choice to honor the call home to ourselves, we become courageous warriors and we feel aligned. The doubt and fears that we once had don’t disappear, but they begin to ttake a backseat to the hope, excitement, and knowing that surface when you step over the edge. We may do unexpected things like quit our jobs or leave a relationship. We might become unpredictable and spontaneous and go back to school or become a yoga teacher. We might allow our true selves to show up in ways that we never allowed before by falling in love or planting seeds in the ground. Regardless of the way your choice will manifest, the edge that we surf is terrifying and exhilarating, and entirely worth it.
If you find yourself at this edge, welcome. You are not alone, you are among good strong faithly company. Together we are stepping over the edge and supporting one another as we wake up, feel more authentically, dive into practice, and make choices that will change our lives and in doing so change our world.
Here are a few things I’ve learned along the way:
Establish yourself in TRUST. Trust in the process, trust in yourself, your inner voice, your preparation. Remember YOU are the point.
Be cautious about leaning too much into faith. Faith requires us to cultivate belief whereas TRUST requires no believing, it is belief itself. When we TRUST, outside evidence becomes an added bonus instead of the needed proof.
When you are in the intensity of the edge, the only practice is to keep going. Focus all your energy in what you know is true. Keep going, even if you are tip-toeing. Keep showing up to whatever is offered.
Be in relationship with your inner voice. Do a practice every day that tunes you into YOU. Your inner guidance, your truth. Don’t worry about what anyone else says, inhabiting the edge is ALL about YOU.
Don’t wait for Perfection. The desire for things to be perfect in order to make choices is a way we orient ourselves to what’s right/wrong, good/bad. So when we have no orientation, the absolute definition of the edge, we feel that it’s imperfect and something is wrong. Act from your gut instead of from proof.
Be fully engaged in the process. It’s the process itself that is the point, so don’t disregard it in an effort to escape discomfort.
Choose growth. When things are most challenging or confusing, see these experiences as an opportunity to refine and grow. Riding the edge is an opportunity to become more mature in our efforts. Apply your intelligence to your experience. Slow down, invite presence, feel your emotions, and watch how you evolve.
Be gentle with yourself. The edge is scary. It’s a difficult place to be. It’s exciting and full of potential, but often without clear and predictable outcome. If you find yourself seeking old comforts, or feeling discouraged, it’s ok. Be accepting of your humanness and recalibrate your efforts.
And lastly, take care of yourself. The edge is hard and you will likely be questioned rather than supported. Show up for yourself like you wish others would show up for you in these times.
The World Doesn’t Need More Yoga Teachers
The world is full of “Yoga Teachers.” Wonderful people with a wonderful skillset to help you refine your alignment in downward facing dog or get buff in boat pose. Yoga Teacher Trainings that drill the architecture or a pose or the choreography of a flow, but our classes, whether intended or not, also make an enormous impact on our healing. Miraculously, in addition to helping us stay fit and calm, the practice of yoga also helps us to relieve pain and suffering. The average Yoga teacher today may be supporting the healing of others through sharing this practice, but they may not even know. Why are the classes designed to keep our bodies healthy making such an impact on our overall wellbeing? The answer is simple: the practice makes us come alive.
“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
― Howard Thurman
The world is full of “Yoga Teachers.” Wonderful people with a wonderful skillset to help you refine your alignment in downward facing dog or get buff in boat pose. Yoga Teacher Trainings that drill the architecture or a pose or the choreography of a flow, but our classes, whether intended or not, also make an enormous impact on our healing. Miraculously, in addition to helping us stay fit and calm, the practice of yoga also helps us to relieve pain and suffering. The average Yoga teacher today may be supporting the healing of others through sharing this practice, but they may not even know. Why are the classes designed to keep our bodies healthy making such an impact on our overall wellbeing? The answer is simple: the practice makes us come alive.
Someone walks into our class after years of pain or anxiety and finds immediate relief. People come again and again because the practice soothed their suffering or helped guide them to make better choices for their health and well being. Does this make Yoga teachers healers? Not exactly. Teachers are more like the conduits. Ideally, we have experienced our own sense of relief or liberation from physical, mental, and emotional discomforts, and now we share these discoveries with others. We are the instrument, but the practice is the wind. The practice itself is what makes the music of healing come alive in others. I’m sure you’ve had the experience of talking until you are blue in the face about how Yoga could help your neighbor with back pain or your cousin with high blood pressure. Just talking about Yoga doesn’t work. You have to do the practice to see the effects. It’s the PRACTICE that is the healer.
Patanjali (sage of yoga) said that Yoga serves two purposes, to relieve suffering and to grant liberation. He didn’t say that Yoga teachers did that, it’s the practice. I firmly believe that our teachers are guides. Like Sherpas on the path up the mountain. They are not the mountain, they are not the ascent. They are simply people who have walked this path hundreds or maybe thousands of times before and know many of the pitfalls and shortcuts. They know when to stop and point out the view, or when to keep pushing through the difficulty because the easeful part is just ahead. They know all of this because they’ve been there. They know where not to step because they’ve limped around on a sore ankle from making a wrong choice. They know where to be still and quiet so that the sweetness of the environment will emerge. When you find a teacher that deeply resonates with you, it might be because their path is so similar to your own. And in your eyes, they are walking it skillfully.
If yoga teachers are healers, it’s only because the practice has helped to heal them. Teachers can know all of the refinements of how to teach an asana, but if that asana hasn’t deeply impacted them in some way, it most likely won’t impact the students. Teachers can talk about healing all day long, but if they haven’t used the practice to heal themselves in some way, it just won’t resonate. As guides, the more directly your teachers have experienced the path, the better the guide they will be. So when you seek a teacher, or seek to be a teacher yourself, we have to be open to the process of our own healing. We can trust those who have walked the path before us (the word in Sanskrit is Sraddha), but we still have to do our own walking. We have to become curious about how and why these asanas or pranayamas are causing a shift. We have to be willing to look inside and not simply be told.
Maybe one of the best qualities of a YTT is it holds you to the work of healing yourself. It can be so much more than simply an asana class. It’s an exploration of body, mind and soul. It’s a sangha of seekers doing the work right next to you, holding you when you are struggling and being held and guided by you when you find your way through the maze. And it’s this quality of YTT above all else that makes a great yoga teacher. Anybody can learn the right things to say in downward facing dog, but can you speak to the way it helps you land in your heart? So if you are looking for a teacher or looking to become a teacher, be clear on your purpose. Be clear that the world doesn’t need more Yoga Teachers, what the world needs are those who have been brought alive by the practice and want to share it with others.
If you are ready to dive deeply into the exploration, refinement, and healing of your own practice and want to share it with others, check out our YTT programs in California, Nevada, North Carolina, Virginia, and Illinois.
Please Don’t Call Me a Yoga Teacher
It never fails. I am settling into my seat in coach when the nicely dressed businessman sitting next to me asks, “traveling for business or pleasure?” A deceptively simple question, that I usually answer with a simple “both.” Then comes the question I dread the most, “what do you do?” To encapsulate this answer with a simple statement falls short of explaining my profession. Yet, inevitably I say it. “I am a Yoga Teacher. ” He then tells me how his niece/daughter/friend is also a yoga teacher and begins the usual talk about how tight his hamstrings are, how he can’t touch his toes, or (my favorite) how fit I must be doing Yoga all the time. This is a gross misrepresentation of how I fill my professional hours and my personal time, but the task of redefining what it means to teach yoga seems insurmountable.
Mr. Businessman’s idea of yoga isn’t a totally inaccurate perception in the yoga industry. I go to yoga classes from time to time that are simply physical fitness classes. But that’s not all that’s out there. Some Yoga teachers guide their students to do more than open the hips or broaden the collar bones.
Some Yoga teachers are using the asanas (physical postures) to help students develop an understanding of themselves at the deepest level. These teachers are helping us to understand the body as an intricate part of the whole system of our humanness, and they are helping us to see that in working with the body, we are also working with our mind, our heart, and our spirit.
So the term “Yoga teacher” is starting to fall short of the truth of what I (and many others like me) do “for a living.” The problem is that to relegate a vast and multifaceted philosophical and scientific system to a physical workout is a mistake. The postures are the catalyst to discovery of deeper truths and a more meaningful relationship with what is real and true. They are not exercise. The breathing is a tool to experience our life in a different way, more connected and more complete. The sensitivity to alignment is more than a way to keep the body safe, it’s a way to move and express the energy within and around us that is always working to shape our experience.
It’s time to change the conversation. For all of us who study and teach Yoga as something that is much, much bigger than physical fitness. It is time we work to reframe what it means to be a Yoga Teacher in the world today. It is time that we own the full scope of what yoga can offer and not stop short by limiting its benefits just to the body.
What are we afraid of? If you are a practitioner of Yoga (and not simply doing a Yoga workout), then let’s start talking about that. Can we take back the label of Yoga Teacher as source of integrity and authenticity and not just another YogaGirl YouTube spoof? Can we revive the understanding and practice of Yoga to be more than just our hamstrings?
Can we bring back the term “Yoga Teacher,” and not cringe at the thought of telling Mr. Businessman what we do for a living and a life practice?