When you first started teaching did you have this experience?
One day you shifted from being a yoga student, fully present to what you were experiencing and open to what teachers in the classes you attend had to say, to suddenly being a teacher yourself and attending classes less for your own growth than to have fresh content for your students?
Many of us experience a version of this.
Yoga starts as a practice of self-inquiry and morphs into lengthy critique full of mental note taking.
While some instructors re-learn how to let their time on the mat be for self-practice and nothing more, many teachers get stuck permanently trying to figure out how to mold someone else's style into their own when they enjoy a class, or pinpoint every flaw in classes they don't.
The analytical process is an important and useful tool when you learn how and when to use it. However, some yoga teachers head deeper down that path into the land of frustration and disillusionment because they feel that so many people are teaching yoga "wrong."
I know instructors that have quit taking classes with their peers.
They get so distracted by how many "mistakes" other teachers are making in regards to asana and disagree with various theories and philosophy (sometimes even if the other instructor teaches the same style of yoga they do) that they just don't bother making the effort to attend classes.
Maybe they are happy.
Maybe they are somehow able to evolve their thinking around teaching and can explore new ideas and methods without anyone else's perspective.
Maybe it's possible, but I have personally never been able to change my mind or shift to an expanded way of thinking without considering the view point of other people.
So, today I am sharing an episode of my brand new podcast (check it out by clicking to subscribe in iTunes here) with you so you can find ways to cope with the inner monologue when you land in a class with another instructor.
Take 20 minutes and listen to this especially if you have a hard time being in the student role.
(SPOILER ALERT: I share a personal example about a time I went to a class led by someone I helped to train and it was awful...truly they were doing it wrong. They had the concepts confused and were mixing in philosophy from a totally different system. Listen to the podcast and I will tell you what I did about it.)