THE YOGA TEACHER JOURNAL

Reflections, practices, and resources for the inner life of teaching yoga.

A Letter to Yoga Teachers

For more than twenty years, yoga has been one of the great continuities of my life. I spent many years practicing vinyasa, followed by nearly eight years of rigorous daily Ashtanga practice, and today my practice continues through Black Lotus Yoga. Along the way, I’ve had the privilege of studying with deeply respected teachers, including Richard Freeman and Mary Taylor, Kino MacGregor and Tim Feldmann, Ty Landrum, Deepika Mehta, Mark Robberds, and Tim Miller. I’ve also spent roughly two decades teaching.

All those years of practicing, studying, teaching, watching, making mistakes, beginning again, and simply being in the presence of gifted teachers have gradually changed what interests me most about teaching yoga. I still care about intelligent sequencing, clear instruction, anatomy, and the craft of teaching, but I find myself increasingly drawn to something harder to quantify: the person doing the teaching.

What allows one teacher to create a space where people soften, trust, become curious, or glimpse something in themselves they had not yet recognized? How does our own practice shape the way we listen, respond, encourage, and use our influence? How do we remain students ourselves? How do we care deeply without taking over another person’s experience? And how do the qualities we admire in yoga gradually become qualities we embody?

This sourcebook grew from those questions.

Some of these writings are practical, others contemplative. Many come from things I have witnessed in teachers I admire, things I have learned through teaching, and things the practice continues to reveal in my own life. None of it feels finished. Perhaps that is part of what keeps yoga so alive.

My hope is simply to offer a place where teachers can return to the deeper questions—not only What am I teaching? but Who am I becoming through the practice, and what am I bringing with me when I enter the space?