Thirty Years of Teaching Yoga

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Sometime last month marked my 30th year of teaching Yoga. While I cannot remember the first day that I taught Yoga in the Spring of 1989, I clearly remember the life milestones that concurred with that then-new beginning. Those milestones occurred sometime in the month of April, and since then I've considered April, 1989 as the beginning of this significant chapter of my life. For most of those years, I taught Yoga as my full-time profession. During many of those years, I was delighted with my choice to follow my passion for Yoga, though some of those years were filled with feelings of doubt.

The arc of my Yoga teaching and practice has evolved over the years, more or less following a U-shaped curve. In the beginning of my teaching and practice, I was young and in love with Yoga. As I descended into midlife, my faith in the hagiographic portrayals of Yoga and its lore wore thin. Now that I'm rounding the bend to the age when many of my friends are retiring, I have had a renaissance in my appreciation for Modern Postural Yoga (MPY) and its practice.

U-Shaped Curve
(From The Economist Magazine)
The release of the book Yoga Body in 2010 was my tipping point in faith lost. Prior to 2010, I received teachings from Yoga masters in India who refuted the claims of MPY teachers. While I trusted and respected these wise teachers, I wasn't quite to the point of fully believing them. Once I saw the solid scholarship of Yoga Body, however, my faith in the claims of MPY's revered teachers collapsed in on itself. Without the scaffolding of faith that I placed in these biggest stars of MPY, I began to really wonder if Supta Virasana really did ease digestive problems, or if spinal twists actually wrung out the liver?

In hindsight these questions seem kind of quaint, though at the time I was really attached to the myth and lore that I learned from the most famous and revered teachers of MPY. Having actively questioned, wrestled with and ultimately made peace with MPY, I am once again happily teaching MPY. In future blog postings I'll share my views on the benefits that I believe arise from its practice, and my hopes for where my teaching will go in future years.

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