Conundrums and human nature
When I first decided to take the leap by becoming a Yoga teacher, I was getting ready to get married. In fact, I was planning my wedding at the SAME time. Now mind you, we did something really small and the planning was at a minimum, but I spent the spring before and part of the summer prior to my Labour Day weekend wedding immersing myself in this ‘new’ world. It was ‘new’ to me, because I had never really been around Yoga ‘students’ or other Yoga teachers.
Like any ‘specialty’, Yoga has its own sense of hierarchy, and codes to live by. It is a microcosm of the world in many ways yet supposedly Yoga teachers live by a more honour-bound set of ‘rules’.
In my teacher training sessions, we would talk about these rules/codes of ethics. We would debate, and have lively discussions. Some of us thought the standards a bit unrealistic on some levels.
The other way I learned more about this ‘world’ was by becoming a member of a list which is now a world-wide on-line subscription for Yoga teachers. It’s called ‘E-sutra’ (the word Sutra in Sanskrit means ‘thread’ – yes indeed kids I speak a ‘dead’ language go me!).
At one point on this ‘list’ the subject of dating one’s students came up. Dating a student in Yoga is a big, big, no, no. BIG TIME! Some liken it to a counselor or psychologist dating a client. Student teacher, guru/student, ‘Svengali’/Trilby relationships are often littered with sexual tension. The way I feel about them is pretty strong: you should NEVER take advantage of a student or anyone’s vulnerability. Period. In yoga, your students can often be very vulnerable.
There was a guy on this list - a well-respected teacher, who would often relate stories, and useful tips for being a teacher. Well one day he decided to admit he had dated not one but TWO of his students. It was the ‘shot fired around the yoga list’ – you could actually hear a collective gasp from the group. People started ripping him a new a-hole. It was horrendous what was said to him. People were up in arms. Had he been in front of them, there would have been bloodshed.
His ‘reasoning’, I won’t use the word excuse, was pretty easy to understand. In the life of a Yoga teacher, who is busy trying to carve out an existence while living in (of all places) NYC, it’s difficult at best to meet people to date. It just so happened he was attracted to one of his students and it just so happened he asked her out.
I decided to write him ‘off-list’ not to ream him a new one even more, but to offer the branch of compassion to him because I felt for him. I can imaging the loneliness; attempting to find a ‘soul mate’ when your very life’s work involves touching souls and not being allowed to then find that soul amongst the ones who would most clearly understand you and be a good match for you at the same time had to be frustrating.
So I wrote to him telling him that I understood. That sometimes life does not have easy answers and sometimes we make mistakes and sometimes those mistakes turn out to be the best decisions of our lives. He wrote me back. Our correspondence with each other was filled with warmth and mutual respect. He told me at one point to look him up if I ever wanted a teaching job in NYC. During time I wrote to him, I related to him my own frustration of getting ready to be married to a man who could care less about Yoga or my studying it; that he never wanted to participate or learn about what I was doing and that I felt it would be something for both of us to share. He in turn encouraged me to keep trying to ‘get him involved’. Little did either of us know that later on, my husband would use my having Yoga in my life and being away from the home in order to study, as his ‘reasoning’ (and here I really want to use the word excuse), for having an affair.
One of the other things that came out of all of this ‘bickering’ on line was another teacher’s confession of how he met the love of his life - (both had taken a class together and he did at one time teach her) - and how she was his sun, moon and stars – it was heart achingly beautiful that someone would state such things in an open forum and even though I was about to be married, I had not experienced this passion in my relationship except at the beginning – in some ways it made me a bit jealous of the intensity of that love.
I (obviously) went on to have a marriage which then failed miserably. All of a sudden I found myself a Yoga teacher with no one to date. LOL. I did not have access to a bevy of ‘studs’, nor would I have ever thought to date one of my students. I was encouraged by friends to try and find someone that way but I felt if I was going to find someone to date via Yoga it would have to be with both of us being students. Not me being a teacher to a romantic interest. The going advice is – if you find yourself attracted to one of your students, you should talk honestly with them and see if they can go to a different class.
***********
I didn’t find the wonderful man I am seeing through a Yoga class. Yet I know he’d gladly share my love for Yoga with me as I want to share his love of his own interests with him. While we are not at the point of admitting on-line our ‘undying’ love for each other (and quite frankly some of that can be rather embarrassing and/or tacky but I still think the eloquence of that Yoga’s teachers words of love for his partner will stay with me for the rest of my days – I wish I could find them to share them with all of you), I can see where if we continue along the path we are currently on, we will at least make those ‘confessions’ to each other.
Like any ‘specialty’, Yoga has its own sense of hierarchy, and codes to live by. It is a microcosm of the world in many ways yet supposedly Yoga teachers live by a more honour-bound set of ‘rules’.
In my teacher training sessions, we would talk about these rules/codes of ethics. We would debate, and have lively discussions. Some of us thought the standards a bit unrealistic on some levels.
The other way I learned more about this ‘world’ was by becoming a member of a list which is now a world-wide on-line subscription for Yoga teachers. It’s called ‘E-sutra’ (the word Sutra in Sanskrit means ‘thread’ – yes indeed kids I speak a ‘dead’ language go me!).
At one point on this ‘list’ the subject of dating one’s students came up. Dating a student in Yoga is a big, big, no, no. BIG TIME! Some liken it to a counselor or psychologist dating a client. Student teacher, guru/student, ‘Svengali’/Trilby relationships are often littered with sexual tension. The way I feel about them is pretty strong: you should NEVER take advantage of a student or anyone’s vulnerability. Period. In yoga, your students can often be very vulnerable.
There was a guy on this list - a well-respected teacher, who would often relate stories, and useful tips for being a teacher. Well one day he decided to admit he had dated not one but TWO of his students. It was the ‘shot fired around the yoga list’ – you could actually hear a collective gasp from the group. People started ripping him a new a-hole. It was horrendous what was said to him. People were up in arms. Had he been in front of them, there would have been bloodshed.
His ‘reasoning’, I won’t use the word excuse, was pretty easy to understand. In the life of a Yoga teacher, who is busy trying to carve out an existence while living in (of all places) NYC, it’s difficult at best to meet people to date. It just so happened he was attracted to one of his students and it just so happened he asked her out.
I decided to write him ‘off-list’ not to ream him a new one even more, but to offer the branch of compassion to him because I felt for him. I can imaging the loneliness; attempting to find a ‘soul mate’ when your very life’s work involves touching souls and not being allowed to then find that soul amongst the ones who would most clearly understand you and be a good match for you at the same time had to be frustrating.
So I wrote to him telling him that I understood. That sometimes life does not have easy answers and sometimes we make mistakes and sometimes those mistakes turn out to be the best decisions of our lives. He wrote me back. Our correspondence with each other was filled with warmth and mutual respect. He told me at one point to look him up if I ever wanted a teaching job in NYC. During time I wrote to him, I related to him my own frustration of getting ready to be married to a man who could care less about Yoga or my studying it; that he never wanted to participate or learn about what I was doing and that I felt it would be something for both of us to share. He in turn encouraged me to keep trying to ‘get him involved’. Little did either of us know that later on, my husband would use my having Yoga in my life and being away from the home in order to study, as his ‘reasoning’ (and here I really want to use the word excuse), for having an affair.
One of the other things that came out of all of this ‘bickering’ on line was another teacher’s confession of how he met the love of his life - (both had taken a class together and he did at one time teach her) - and how she was his sun, moon and stars – it was heart achingly beautiful that someone would state such things in an open forum and even though I was about to be married, I had not experienced this passion in my relationship except at the beginning – in some ways it made me a bit jealous of the intensity of that love.
I (obviously) went on to have a marriage which then failed miserably. All of a sudden I found myself a Yoga teacher with no one to date. LOL. I did not have access to a bevy of ‘studs’, nor would I have ever thought to date one of my students. I was encouraged by friends to try and find someone that way but I felt if I was going to find someone to date via Yoga it would have to be with both of us being students. Not me being a teacher to a romantic interest. The going advice is – if you find yourself attracted to one of your students, you should talk honestly with them and see if they can go to a different class.
***********
I didn’t find the wonderful man I am seeing through a Yoga class. Yet I know he’d gladly share my love for Yoga with me as I want to share his love of his own interests with him. While we are not at the point of admitting on-line our ‘undying’ love for each other (and quite frankly some of that can be rather embarrassing and/or tacky but I still think the eloquence of that Yoga’s teachers words of love for his partner will stay with me for the rest of my days – I wish I could find them to share them with all of you), I can see where if we continue along the path we are currently on, we will at least make those ‘confessions’ to each other.
posted by Colette at 10:03 AM
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