What Color Is Your Yoga Mat©

Yoga is the country’s most popular new form of fitness, with yoga practices for abs, thighs, pregnancy, hypertension, and almost every other body part or physical condition. A myriad of yoga teacher training programs exist to certify yoga teachers, but it is difficult to assess their qualities. If you can learn to understand a few ideas common to yoga teaching, however, you can remove the ambiguity from what has been the most challenging part of starting yoga – finding the right teacher.

The results, from over 500 teacher-respondents to the questionnaire, enable you to understand what distinguishes a good yoga teacher from a great yoga teacher. It should come as no surprise that we found significant variances in teaching methods, and qualifications.

1. A great yoga teacher yokes their intuition to their personal practice.

 The meaning of “yoga” has its roots in the ancient language Sanskrit, whose interpretation of yoga is to “yoke” or find a union. A great teacher unites your physical needs, which they distill from observing the limitations you exhibit in a yoga posture, with examples they demonstrate, to enable your corrected posture. The corrections they teach you will provide insight into how to develop specific areas, e.g. balance, strength, stability, stillness, of your individual yoga practice.

2. They create a synthesis between their teacher’s teachings and their own perspective.

 If they have a full comprehension of yoga’s “big-picture,” they will add specific insights they gained from being a student to motivate you beyond what you think you can achieve in yoga. The difference will be clear: There are yoga teachers who are traffic directors, that call out postures and give quickie demonstrations, and there are teachers who teach, using examples they personify from the conviction they have gained by having proven the benefits of yoga to themselves through their own depth of study.

3. Great yoga teachers can guide yoga students inward by demonstrating deep knowledge, without being somber.

Yoga uses relaxed concentration, in which you try to focus on nothing, to help calm your mind so you can work through a variety of physical postures. Meditation enables smoother breathing, which in-turn allows you to open a particular part of your body, to move deeply into a posture. This can be very challenging and requires a yoga teacher who can get you to be still and breathe deeply without a lot of ambiguous rigmarole about visualization. The great yoga teacher Erich Shiffman describes this as “moving into stillness.” Joseph Campbell, the American mythology and literature scholar, also helped de-mystify yoga meditation. Campbell said; “Don’t meditate on nothing. Meditate on this” (meaning where you are today). “This is nothing”.

4. A great yoga teacher maintains the flexibility and strength to teach what is needed, without leaving footprints on the student’s psyche.

One of the hardest parts of starting yoga is the letting go you hear so much about. Yoga teachers’ recognize this and know that, in order to relax, you have to release stress, which can make you emotionally vulnerable. A great yoga teacher knows that the simple calming effect you gain from sitting still in a posture is enough; they won’t press their class to engage their minds in functions related to advanced meditations. They know that, most of the time, for most of us, less is more.

5. A great yoga teacher communicates with his or her own teacher to find resolutions to student questions.

Anyone teaching anything deserves respect for their efforts. But how many marketing teachers do you know that will take a sabbatical each year to practice with their teachers? A great yoga teacher usually takes an annual hiatus from teaching to learn more from their main teacher. After this, they’ll come back to class and reveal a heightened sense of awareness about what the class needs. You’ll find yourself enraptured by their efficiency of words, which will enable you to learn more, with less effort.

6. Great yoga teachers demonstrate passion and dedication to inner personal practice in class.

Most of us have stumbled into yoga classes not really knowing what to expect, and find trusting what the teacher says very hard because we’re not open. Usually this lack of openness is manifested physically, and that is why we are there in the first place. You will find great yoga teachers will tell you about their own growth through yoga, and the little tricks they learned about the importance of the transitions between postures. They don’t teach a class to jump from pose to pose: it’s a flow. A great teacher encourages you to find a dignified, stable, comfortable seat from which to cultivate your breath along the energetic core of your body. This naturally moves your attention away from the outer world toward your inner consciousness, and is meant to kindle an awakening within a sequential hierarchy of energy centers called chakras; the seven nerve centers located around your spine, beginning at the bottom and ascending to the crown of your head. Each signifies a progression of consciousness achieved through yoga and mediation.

7. Great yoga teachers have established an authentic foundation from which to assist students in finding their own self-knowledge and healing.

This is demonstrated in class by their attitude that you should be feeling instead of thinking. In short, a great teacher will help you get back to your body and teach you that as you meet your edge, or some point of resistance, compassionate curiosity will help you understand and honor your body, where ever you happen to be in yoga. Above all, they will teach you that yoga is not a stretching contest.

8. Great yoga teachers communicate their inner understanding of yoga in practical examples for students to explore and make their own.

A great teacher will take time in class to demonstrate the muscular-skeletal structural control needed to gain particular benefits from a posture. They will also have, as I have said, an efficiency of words that keep corrections concise, and constant from side-to-side, right-to-left, so that when they are teaching the mirror image, their verbal corrections will be the same, so as not to distract your focus on balance.

9. Most importantly, a great yoga teacher nurtures students into an authentic yoga experience of being human, alive, and radiant.

Yoga will help you learn how to yoke your outer consciousness with your inner consciousness, to enable you to derive a renewed feeling by letting go of the materiality we come in contact with day-to-day. Great yoga teachers help you do this in three ways: Through positive teacher/student reinforcement techniques in class; By creating a safe class-environment for you to be able to let go and explore your inner self; And by helping you cultivate the energetic life forces yogis refer to as Prana or chi. The overall goal is to try to root your yoga practice in the earth to find your source of energy and connect yourself in some way to the universe. This is the yin and yang philosophy you hear reference to.

So when you want to learn the right way, you need a great yoga teacher. In order to find the right teacher for you, you may have to try a dozen to see the difference. Do not give up if you have tried a teacher at a gym, spa, or studio and have become frustrated. Pick another, and then another. If the teacher you try is not right for you, and you choose to pick up and leave within the first fifteen minutes, if you are a courteous student, more than likely the studio will allow you the credit to return at another time to try another teacher.