Should I Teach if I Feel like an Imposter? | Mark Whitwell
Mark Whitwell | Heart Of Yoga
Last week I received a brilliant question from a close friend who had recently started teaching in New Zealand. He noticed that during his classes he found himself speaking in a strange tone of voice:
“I noticed my voice change as soon as I started teaching. I would put on this fake teaching voice that was really calm and wise and always in a monotone…like an airline assistant. When I realized afterwards, I found it disturbing. Here I was teaching people how to enjoy their natural, unpatterned life and all the while I was performing some stupid spiritual role play. As soon as I saw myself doing this I wanted to stop teaching. I felt like a fraud.”
We all know the Yoga teacher voice!
We have all been deeply programmed into the assumption that a teacher — especially a teacher of a ‘spiritual’ discipline like Yoga — is meant to be a perfect person. Students assume that Yoga teachers do not suffer the same emotional and life difficulties as others. And teachers feel this as a pressure to live up to that image.
What my friend felt was a sense that he had to be free of all karmas, patterns, roles, obstructions, and difficulties in his life before he could be a valid teacher who was useful to others.
This is not so.
Who Can Teach?
There is a saying in the ancient traditions that those who are born into the natural state — in which one is unobstructed in body and mind to the powers of creation — are, paradoxically, not the best teachers, even though religious institutions tend to focus on them. The reason is that these rare people, known as avatars, have not been through the difficult process of overcoming their personal obstructions to freedom, but were simply born that way.
Whereas if you are somebody who has felt the restrictions of the usual patterned life and are or have gone through process of living beyond these limitations, then you are much better equipped to understand other’s who are suffering too. If you have known what it is suffer, then you can understand other’s needs and adapt Yoga to that person accurately. Because you know what it is.
My teacher Tirumalai Krishnamacharya would respond to the question:
“Who can teach Yoga?”
With the answer:
“One who has suffered.”
Such a person is known in the traditions as the Acharya and they are regarded as the best kind of teacher.
I told my friend that it his humble acknowledgement of restriction or patterning in both his teaching and his life, qualified him to teach. That he did not have to be abiding as infinity twenty-four seven in order to be useful to people.
The teacher says,
“I have been asked to teach so I am going to do my best. I’m not really qualified to do it, but I’ve been asked to so I am going to do it. And I’ll probably make mistakes.”
With that humility you go forth and do your best. And your best will be really good because you are a really good person!
Find Your Own Voice
Over time, as you practice and teach, you discover your own spontaneous and individual language. You fall out of the Yoga teacher voice naturally, the roles that we unconsciously perform. It cannot be forced, but it will happen. The problem with Yoga is that results come unpredictable and spontaneously. So it’s best to not even worry about it. Just go out there and give people the technology of body, breath, and intimacy. Know what you hold and give it to as many people as you can.
In the meantime, here are some practical ideas around dialogue and language that may be useful for you to consider yourself during a class:
- Be clear and precise with directions. Often it is possible to direct people without any demonstration.
- Adjust the volume of your voice appropriately to the situation. For example: a louder, stronger tone for a more demanding posture, or a softer one for more relaxing posture.
- Choose words to create effects and feelings from detailed physical directions to poetic imaging suggestions. Avoid yoga teaching ‘stock phrases’ especially ones that encourage people into striving, like “the full expression of a pose.” Be original and succinct in your language, just as you would be talking to a friend.
- Choose spontaneous dialogue based on the immediate observation of what is actually happening. Direct the class and individuals in the desired direction. These may change as the class progresses and you get to know your students better. Speak directly to those present in the dynamic of the moment. Avoid a written script.
- Students approaching yoga for the first time are clearing their mind in quite a deep way. Give clear and simple instructions. Introduce the breath and develop their relationship to it. Give enough work for students to really feel something, but not so much as to cause fatigue. Reiterating the body/breath relationship throughout the class and not being overly complicated with instruction will help the student relax the mind, while retaining pleasant associations with the process. Too much verbal instruction about anatomical featuring and this and that only makes the mind busy and distracts from the quality and purpose of asana.
- Gentle encouragement and praise can be of great help. Yoga is a process of observing oneself without criticism and with self-acceptance, and above all, it is about feeling better. Endeavor to create and assist this process with first- time students. Minimise their struggle and you will maximise the depth of their relaxation and release.
- Teaching principles are explored further in the 8-week by-donation online immersion into the heart of Yoga.
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