Yoga Teacher Woes
As it is with everything in material existence, there is the flip side which is different to the up-side or the desired effects. Like this body for instance, it was born, it developed, it reached maturity and then everything was downhill until the reverse of its birth happens.
Yoga???????
I taught it since in 1973.Then I opened an ashram which lasted some months and then circumstances demanded that I close it. From then till now, I taught yoga and wrote books concerning that. But again and again, I get bad feedback from students.
Even teaching yoga can turn into a hell, like most anything else having to do with relations with human beings.
If I teach someone says that I should not teach. If I do not teach, someone proposes that I should do so. If a student of mine teaches, someone says that the student should not teach. If none of the students teach, someone criticizes I have not qualified anyone to teach.
If I do a favor to one student, another student resents that. If I am strict with one student someone finds fault with that. If I am not at someone’s beck and call, complaints come about that. If I do not take a student’s advice, I see a ton of negativity for that.
This is similar to when one is a juvenile. At that time, one is under control of parents, whereby one is disciplined if one does not do as expect. The irony of life that even when doing yoga, one falls under the censor of others, even persons who pose as students. The student(s) becomes the parent who dishes out discipline for whatever one did which the student disagreed with.
The other aspect which brings hard feelings and bad emotions is the publishing of literature concerning yoga. If one publishes trashy material, people become offended by it. But it is worse if one publishes quality information, because then many people are appalled at one’s honesty and feel that one should be more selective in what is printed.
People say or think that a yogi should not divulge certain data about deep meditation and transcendental experiences. What should a writer do? Should he have a censorship board which reads his data and deletes what is undesirable? Who is to judge what should or should not be published? Whose sensitivities should be taken into account? Should brutal honesty be banned so that everything is sanitized to satisfy someone or a board of book reviewers?
