Teaching From Inside Part 1
This Lesson includes an assignment, please watch the video for a full explanation
Teaching from Inside Part 1 • You Gotta Let it Go if you want it to Flow: The practice of surrender while teaching yoga
Finding our Flow:
Shambhavananda yoga has produced many albums of Kirtan, sanskrit chants, as well as a few original albums of devotion. In one of these albums there is a song by Faith Stone that tells us “You Gotta Let it Go if you Want it To Flow”, referring to the yogic concept that a teacher must surrender their own inner tensions in order to allow something higher to flow through to their students. Because even though we all want to do a great job when teaching, this need can itself become the very thing that pulls us away from our center—blocking our creative flow and preventing us from teaching to our highest potential. We ‘play ourselves’, as the Malinivijaya Tantra teaches, letting the rich energy of a teaching atmosphere flow into our worries instead of our hearts.
Avoiding Pitfall of Doership:
To avoid this common pitfall, the Sutras teach, we must use our practice to repeatedly ‘detach from these outer impressions’ throughout the teaching process, not just at the beginning and end of our practice as we say ‘namaste’, but throughout the center of our practice. As the Malinivijaya Tantra teaches, “Due to the impressions they have of what others think of them or expect from them and of their desire to help others, to satisfy them with boons, the yogi may lose their temper and become careless and uneven-minded, blocking their flow of God consciousness… So, although they are aware of God consciousness in the beginning and in the end, they are played by this universe in the center, played by hunger, played by thirst, played by every aspect of daily life. Therefore, the one who desires to achieve the highest being should not be attached to these outer impressions.”
Detaching from outer impressions:
The Practice of ‘Teaching from inside’ is how we do that, how we detach from these outer impressions in order all our creative flow to not only serve our students, but our own spiritual growth, ensuring that the energy of our teaching classrooms flows through us, and doesn’t just stop at us. As the tantra teaches, this is something that occurs in the midst of our teaching experience— ie. No matter how centered we are when we start teaching, we have to be willing to come back to our practice throughout the experience, over and over and over again. This is the practice of letting go of our small self in order for the a deeper wisdom to flow through. There is no doubt that we have to do the work of preparing for our class, and there is a lot of mental effort during class to remember our sequence and affiliated cues— but as a yogi we take on the ‘triple awareness’, the work of not only preparing but also surrendering, in order to feel what’s real for you in the present.
One way to do this is by shifting our approach to teaching the feeling that you are giving the teachings, towards the feeling of sharing the teachings you have received as service. When you start to see teaching as service, it allows you to simply offer what you have been given, and to release the burden of doership that so often follows us onto the teaching mat.
This expanded capacity is what sets the stage for real magic of teaching yoga, as Sri ShambhavAnanda teaches in the following quote.
“Tremendously serving others is one of the highest practices you can do. So how do you do that? You don’t teach with a vengeance. You don’t teach with anger. You don’t teach with tension.Instead you open your heart and you let go of your little self. You surrender and you allow the energy to flow. Then wonderful energy and deep wisdom can come through you. If you are trying to teach from a textbook, or if you are trying to teach from some rules that you read somewhere, other efforts are meaningless. But when you teach from the heart, when you open up and you gather in the spiritual energy from your connection, then it not only benefits others, but it also benefits you. The things that I hear coming out of my mouth sometimes shock me, because they are not coming from my mind.”
The Exercise: Teaching with Centered Breathing
Emptying Our Cups:
The practice of releasing doership and teaching as a form of service is practice of surrender, of getting out of the way and allowing the teachings to flow through you. To do this you have to make room for the flow, you have to ‘empty your cup’ as the classic zen story teaches it.
“NAN-IN, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen.
Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring.
The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!”
“Like this cup,” Nan-in said, “you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?”
Emptying your cup is more than a metaphor, it is a very real part of teaching from inside. Through skillful use of the breath and movement, the following pranayama practice can be a great asset on your journey to accomplish this.
Overview of the Exercise
“Centered Breathing” is a very simple pranayama that incorporates mantra and movement in order to allow the mind to dissolve the script and re-find our personal experience within the present. To do the centering breath, start with hands at the heart. Inhale as you move the hands over head, and when the hands are at their peak, begin to exhale as the hands part and fan down to your sides. This is the moment of emptying the mind. The next inhale scoops the arms up the sides again, as you fill the heart. After the hands come together over head, you take the last exhale gliding the hands down to the heart. The entire centering breath is 2 full breaths long, 2 inhales and 2 exhales. It is common to rush the breath because of stress, which is why it is also helpful to combine the breath with a mantra.
Incorporating the Mantra:
Multiple peer reviewed scientific studies have concluded that an optimal length for breathing is about 5.5 seconds in, and 5.5 seconds out. The mantra “Namah Shivaya” is 5 syllables, so repeating this one syllable per second as you float and lower the arms is a great way of not only ensuring you are breathing optimally, but also focusing the mind on your mantra. Pausing in between the breaths to repeat ‘Om’ silently to yourself can help you feel the pause, and give you that last half second of breath flow. When the arms, the breath, the mantra and inner focus come together— the centered breath can have a tremendous effect on your experience of teaching. For this exercise, take one centered breath before teaching and one centered breath after teaching, to ensure that we are bringing our best practice to the experience. Don’t teach the breath, just take the breath— it’s for you to get a glimpse of what’s possible when we really center while teaching.
Beginning, Middle and End:
As the Tantra taught earlier, just practicing at the beginning and end may not be enough— we have to bring our practice to the center of our experience of the posture as well. To this end we will also include one more centering moment into the teaching experience— taking an inhale and exhale into your heart alongside your mantra. When you zoom out to look at the structure of an asana you can see that there is an optimal space built in for this reflective moment. The Setup requires constant cueing and checking in with your students. The primary movement needs to be precise in order to ensure that everyone is moving in the right direction. But once the students are in the posture, after the primary movement, we have a golden opportunity to breathe and feel within our own posture in order to teach from an intuitive space. So in this exercise, instead of accessing your inner cue card and repeating an ‘exploration’ you have memorized, you will access your inner experience and allow the exploration cue to come to you.
Don’t forget the middle:
So after you guide the student into the primary movement, you will get quiet, inhale and exhale into your heart alongside your mantra, and notice what sensation comes to you about the posture. Where do you feel the posture? How do you want to work with it? Notice this sensation and then base your next cue on it. It may not be a cue you have heard before, or it may be a very familiar cue— the only important thing is that his cue is coming from your own experience, not from anything memorized. This ensures that the cue is coming from inside, and allows you to start teaching from this more intuitive and felt space inside.
Step by Step: Teaching a pose with Centered Breathing
1. Take a centered breath (don’t teach it, just do it yourself)
2. Teach the Setup of the posture
3. Teach the Primary movement of the posture
4. Take an inhale and exhale into your heart while you work in the posture. Notice your sensation, feel how you are working and trust it.
5. Give a cue to the class based on your personal experience
6. Cue the students Out of the posture
7. Finish with a Centered Breath (don’t teach it, just do it yourself)