On Yoga Teachers, Pain & Sharing

A while back, a yoga teacher friend of mine shared something personal with me. She said she wasn’t telling people the real reason how her neck was in pain when they would ask why she was wearing a neck brace. She told me she fell down in a funny way in her headstand, but she preferred not to share that because she didn’t want to give people the impression that yoga was dangerous. I sympathized, I understood, but recently I started thinking that we might have a problem.

As yoga teachers, whether we take the therapy approach or not, I suppose I can safely assume that we do aim to support our students’ wellbeing, be it physical, emotional, mental or energetic. Many of us do express the benefits of yoga and encourage people to expand, engage, be present, etc. Yet I find that there is so much emphasis on the “benefits of yoga” that when we ourselves are in pain, we don’t know how to express that, we don’t share it very comfortably.

I’ve been suffering with knee and hip pain for months now, and I’m exploring various approaches to help stabilize and heal. I accept that it may be a lengthy learning process, it is what it is. But at the same time I sometimes find myself thinking twice before confiding in a fellow teacher how agonizing it has been of a journey, a part of me feels insecure because in my head it sounds like I am the only yoga teacher I know who has some kind of chronic pain she doesn’t know yet how to fully resolve. I know that’s in no way true, I know my ego is desperately dramatising, but it could also be that I don’t hear my fellow yoga teachers expressing or sharing such experiences, thus my ego feels alone (and weird) in this.

Is shame there somewhere? Do we feel like we’ve failed at delivering what we preach? Are we too proud to admit that we, just like everyone else, can get injured or mismanage our bodies? Too proud to express our need for help? Are we too caught up in an idealistic image of ourselves that we desperately want to identify with that image, even if it wasn’t the truth?

It doesn’t sound right to me, and it doesn’t sit well. I feel we need to talk.

Earlier today the universe pushed me to attend a group class (a friend’s special celebration). Honestly, I wanted to avoid attending, but I showed up to step on my ego (and be with my friend) and ended up modifying 95% of the poses to be kind to my knees. And you know what, I did most of that with my eyes closed, and it was blissful. Today, I didn’t care much about what others would think of my not-in-line-with-the-teacher-poses.

I think we need to talk. I think we need to normalize the talk about our struggles - be them emotional, mental or physical. Yes yoga teachers get their heart broken, we have desires, we stray off our “disciplined” paths, we eat junk sometimes, get hangovers, get annoyed, be annoying, wake up with neck pain, have constipation, forget to breathe deeply and can be a mess at times. Being certified as a yoga teacher does not take away your bad karma forever and does not shield you from suffering. It just shows you a way to have more compassionate awareness, and that is what we teach, and that is what we ought to primarily practice in our lives. Compassionate awareness.

I pray we share with love and compassion. I pray we hold space for ourselves and for each other. I pray all beings are well, healthy and happy.

Om Shanti.

Amal - Oct 2017