JOURNAL

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 Richard Freeman and Mary Taylor, Tim Miller, Ty Landrum, Kino MacGregor and Tim Feldmann, Deepika Mehta, Mark Robberds, and other teachers who have shaped the way I understand this practice. I’ve also been teaching for close to two decades.

When I first began teaching, I remember wishing there were more places to turn for some of the questions that lived underneath the mechanics of teaching. There were wonderful resources for sequencing, anatomy, alignment, philosophy, and becoming more skillful in the classroom, and there are even more available today. What I longed for were conversations that went a little deeper into the person doing the teaching, like how we stay close to what yoga means to us, how we allow the practice to keep shaping us, and how we recognize when outside expectations begin pulling us away from something we know inwardly to be true.

We are also teaching in a time when there are countless ways to share and reach people, which can be wonderful. At the same time, the desire to be successful can make it easy to place our sights on algorithms, trends, numbers, and what seems to be working for someone else. Little by little, those things can begin shaping what we teach, how we present ourselves, and even what we believe we need to become. I’m interested in how we participate in all of this while continuing to listen inwardly and remain aligned with what yoga truly means to us.

These are the kinds of things that sometimes wake me at three in the morning. I find myself thinking about what I’ve learned, witnessed, been invited into, and sometimes learned the hard way, and wondering how I might share some of it in a way that supports myself and other teachers. Perhaps someone who is just beginning and trying to find their own ground. Perhaps someone who has been teaching for years and feels pressure to conform, has become discouraged, or is simply burned out.

Over time, all of the practicing, studying, teaching, watching, making mistakes, and beginning again has changed what interests me most about teaching yoga. I find myself increasingly drawn to the person doing the teaching. How does our own practice shape the way we listen, encourage, respond, and use our influence? How do we remain students ourselves? And how do the qualities we value gradually become qualities we embody?

This Journal grew from a desire to keep returning to those deeper questions and to share some of what has been generously shared with me along the way. Some of these writings come from things I have witnessed in teachers I admire. Others have grown through teaching, counseling, meditation, relationships, disappointments, and what the practice continues to reveal. Some are practical and others more contemplative. None of it feels finished. Perhaps that is part of what keeps yoga so alive.

My hope is that this becomes a place we can return to when we want to listen a little more deeply… to ourselves, to the practice, and to what may be asking to be lived through us. A place to consider not only What am I teaching? but also Who am I becoming through the practice, and what am I bringing with me when I enter a teaching space?

A practice for turning inward
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