One of the themes I keep coming up in my life, and especially in my role as a yoga teacher, is that of learning about energy management and personal power (which I might say are similar in nature). “Energy” as it pertains to healing and the body and “power” as vitality, attention and intention. Let me explain.
When I was in massage school, learning to become a massage therapist, our student clinic was booked solid with people requesting a massage from me. I worked so hard I made myself sick and eventually dropped out of school never to finish. However, the lesson I learned is that most people were coming to me to “fix” them, which I could not do, nor did I want to be in this kind of experience with them.
I was very clear within myself that my role was to co-create a healing experience with my clients and students.
What I love about teaching yoga is the fact that even if I wanted to I can’t “do” anyone else’s yoga for them. There is a more clear delineation of co-creativity. 1.As a student I know I need teachers to help me learn. 2.I am the only one who can do the work of healing myself. Teachers can help yet they cannot do it for me.
Abhyanga is a Sanskrit word for self-massage. It is the act of applying oil (which is food) to the largest organ of the body (the skin) for the purpose of greater intelligence and connectivity of the whole organism of the human body. In every culture there is a form of “laying on of hands” which implies an act of concentrated attention, with bodies, engaged in a shared experience of moving energy toward harmony and healing, seeking homeostasis and balance.
In yoga we get to talk about taking personal responsibility for our own healing and at the same time we need guides along the way. This is clear. (I hope.) Teachers need students and students need teachers. The quest then becomes to cultivate discernment on the path of yoga (life) with awareness, knowing that we need teachers and not giving away our pawer to the “other” naively believing that the “other” with save us, fix, us, heal us, essentially will do our work for us. This is true of our relationships too. My teacher, Lee, used to chide his students for giving away their power to “the health food movement.” It’s a good lesson in inquiring where and how we give our power away.
Don’t worry, that’s the beautify of being human—learning where we are stuck or off our center and returning, forever making the journey of remembering ourselves and returning to center. Forgetting and remembering is the human condition.
How can we empower one another to become “healthy individuals,” as my husband Jesse put it, AND co-create with one another on our own path through healing, toward freedom with the foundational context that we are all whole, complete, and perfect already.
Teachers do not have all the answers. Teachers, doctors, nurses, parents, massage therapists, scientists are all people. They have studied one area and they are learning to become experts. We are learning to become experts. Your yoga teacher, your spiritual teacher, your mentor, your shaman, do not have all the answers. What a good teacher does is turn us back on ourselves so that we can live our questions, come the answers and animate them in our lives. Good teachers are guides who motion us back toward our highest, deepest Selves.
Whoot! Cheers to doing the work it takes to BE human!