When I did my first yoga trainings I clung to everything | was taught for years.
‘Stretching lengthens your hamstrings, twisting detoxifies the body, headstands reverse blood flow.’ (Spoiler: all wrong)
The parts of me that needed that sureity, that definite answer, that firm unarguable set of facts clung to these, yet allowed me to bend the yamas & niyamas to suit.
I ended up hard on ‘facts’ and despite my earnest preaching, fickle on philosophy.
And I will be honest, it really hurt when I realised none of the things Id learnt, repeated and banked on were actually true.
Then copy and paste that to apply to many other yoga trainings and educational sessions I have attended.
A period of grieving is normal when we have spent hundreds of hours and thousands of pounds learning something that wasn’t right. Most yoga teachers will recognise this yoga education grieving pattern:
DENIAL – this wasn’t what I was taught!
ANGER – what?! This is wrong!
BARGAINING – okayyyyy but what if…
DEFEATED – Okay, well now, I don’t know what to teach
ACCEPTANCE – ahh now Im starting to understand, think criticallly, let me share this!
Yin yoga is one of the branches that is still stuck. Really stuck. So when evidence, updated physios, research and many online educators are proving different – are we making the same mistakes around fascia facts & cultural appropriation in this area too?
And whilst these may be the facts, where has the yoga gone in yin?
Why are we glorifying the physical and not the philosophical? Why are we teaching everything but the yoga?
It’s hard when we see big names still selling out yin courses based on this but where’s the integrity, the updating, the honesty? Where’s the guidance to evidence?
I get it, I really do.
And it’s always us yoga teachers who, ironically, find it hardest to let go. To let go of what no longer serves us in our education, despite teaching this approach to our students in class..
Are you dedicated to unlearning?
I have a great yin refresher course I am very proud of it and it has received beautiful reviews.
Participants are now flying teaching a tweaked approach, you can too.
My digital on demand in Yoga refresher,
FINDING THE YOGA IN YIN,
will update your knowledge, simplify your teachings, provide you with tips for practical application, restore the missing yoga philosophy, relinquish our grip on things that we now know to be inaccurate about the body & encourages us to look through a different lens at our use, or misuse of TCM.
