Yogi: Touching Students
Meditationtime Forum Post
Date: Posted 5 years before May 01, 2017
MiBeloved 5 years ago
I got an inquiry about touching students when showing yoga exercises.
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First of all my training is that yoga should only be taught if one is commissioned by a teacher. The main reason for this is accountability. If one teaches but one is not commissioned by a more advanced person, then who is one accountable to? What social standards should one live up to in that case?
When there is a teacher, it is easy to determine what should be done and what is approved behavior. Patanjali listed a set of yamas and niyama which define dos and don’ts.
If there is no such teacher with whom one can get a code of conduct, then one has to create one and use it.
When teaching postures, it become necessary to hold someone’s body but that carries with it the danger of sexual energy exchange. Then there is the question of what to do with the sexual energy which entered one’s psyche from a student?
If possible male teachers should have female assistants who demonstrate to female students and who touch female students. If a male teacher touches a female student there is a risk that sexual energy will pass in either direction, and the result will be that either the teacher or student or both will be affected.
The other thing is that the teacher of the teacher may not approve of certain associations with some students. Once I ran an ashram during the year of 1973-1974. I was teaching both kundalini yoga which I learnt from Yogi Bhajan and also the asanas and third eye meditation, I learnt from Arthur Beverford. Once I called him. I was in Springfield Missouri. He was in California. When I explained to him how I was managing the ashram, he did not like certain things. Like for instance he did not like that I was walking students up at 4 am for yoga class and meditation. He thought it was too early. He had other objections.
So if you are teaching a certain method on behalf of a teacher, you have to be clear with yourself how much of that teacher’s methods you will use.
Karma is not an illusion, at least not on this physical level and also not in the astral world. It is a real thing that affects people and messes up their plans. So Patanjali near the end of his sutras talk about dharmamegha, which is the cloud (megha) of righteousness rules (dharma). It means that as a spiritual teacher, one would be a fool not to know what the risks are when influencing people.
I am lucky because I only have to teach one or two people. I am not required by any of my teachers to teach many. And in fact for myself I am not a very ambitious person and I am disinclined to being a teacher or leader. Why?
Because essentially I do not like to do hard work. Teaching yoga in a sincere way is hard work. Also for me I have to have coverage from my yogi gurus and from deities, especially from Shiva and Krishna. But if you do not believe in them and if it is just you and the higher self, then you don’t have to be accountable to anyone.
If I hold a yoga class and begin teaching what Srila Yogeshwaranand showed me, I have to remember that I am teaching on his behalf. If I am explaining the Gita, I have to explain that this Guy Krishna thinks He is God and has all these rules and conditions which he lays out for his devotes.
If I am teaching on behalf of Beverford then I have to explain that he believed in a Primal Creative Cause and he did not believe that one person, an individual identity could be the Cause of all causes.
And if someone wants to teach on my behalf then I lay down rules and explain to the person where I will commit myself and where I will help cover if anything funny happens and the person ends up in a karmic fix.
I try to hide myself so that no one knows that I teach yoga. Just about an hour ago I heard a man telling a lady that there was a guy nearby who is an expert on yoga. So when I heard that the hairs raised on my skin and I was thinking, “This guy is my enemy.”
Any association means exchange of karmic energy and it does not always go in one’s favor. One might be opening Pandora’s Box and what happens may go beyond what one can control.
Personally I do not believe that yoga should be taught to everybody. I feel that unless you are supported by higher yogis, your yoga teaching will result in your undoing. So like that for me it is very easy to be a student yogi forever without ever being a teacher.
The other day I was talking to Tobe Terrell and he said something profound which is:
Is the desire to teach stronger than the desire to learn?
Well that subject was discussed in my book Spiritual Master*.
Lucky for me I feel that there is a Supreme Person, a specific person that no one is going to merge into and share power. My idea is that this person is responsible for what is happening in the world. So to my view instead of that person sleeping away in Paradise, and me worrying myself to death on earth about the problems of human beings, I will go to sweet sleep in paradise and the Supreme Person should be the one who is worrying about everything. Why should I care if He does not give a hoot?
It is a callous obviously but that is my view.
* https://sites.google.com/site/michaelbeloved/spiritual-master
