Right before graduating teacher training, I moved out to the Bay Area. I flew back to NC for the last two weekends of training and graduation, and then said a bittersweet goodbye to my teachers and friends. I waited about a year before teaching my first yoga class, and I was completely terrified. I was nervous to stand and talk in front of people. I felt disconnected from my roots, my teacher, my home, my friends, and my studio. I felt a bit lost. My training was so thorough, so in-depth, but my lack of trust in myself led me to constantly ask myself “What am I doing?” “Who am I to teach this practice?”
I remember sitting down in my SF apartment to watch an episode of the series “Om City,” and the main character, Grace, said something that hit me so deeply that I wrote it down.
“I feel fake. How can I say I’m a teacher and a leader in my life when I have so much fear and doubt in my heart? How can I teach people to love themselves when I don’t know how to love myself? I’m scared I won’t ever stop feeling like I’m falling behind, and I hate that I doubt myself and my abilities all the time.”
In this episode, Grace is in a training with Elena Brower, and they are working on identifying the thought patterns that get ingrained in our brain and loop over and over. Elena explains that writing the thoughts down, naming them, helps to identify this as a loop and as something that isn’t necessarily real but a sort of knee-jerk reaction our brain has to difficult situations.
Over the past few years of teaching, I have absolutely fallen into this loop and have heard the same types of thoughts and patterns from many other teachers. There is a certain beauty to this loop, as I believe it is what often helps push us to learn more about ourselves and dive deeper into the roots of this practice. But we can get a bit stuck here if we aren’t careful.
Here in the Bay Area, and I imagine any big city, teaching yoga feels like a bit of a hustle. The commuting from one studio to the next, the competition for studios and prime time slots, taking whatever time slots and pay you can get, and trying to keep up your social media account so people know you even exist! All while maintaining your own practice, study, relationships and self-care!
So I started dreaming of a community where teachers, from all over, can lovingly connect with each other. Where we can explore, tell stories, and listen. A place where we can share meaningful feedback to each other and refine our teaching. A way to identify and name some of our habitual thought patterns and hold space for each other as we navigate them. A gathering with no real agenda, that just opens organically into whatever we need in that moment. Maybe a meditation one day, a kirtan another day, a discussion of how best to honor the roots of this practice, a sharing of what books we are currently drawing inspiration from, discussing something that happened in a class the other day.
This idea seemed a bit overwhelming to me (as someone who generally resists social media) until now. The pandemic has ripped us all out of our routines and thrown us into a strange new world of connecting online. My first reaction was to kind of shut it down. I didn’t want to teach online. I didn’t want to have to post anything on Instagram. I didn’t want to use Zoom. But I realized that it was the only option to continue to connect. I whole-heartedly believe that to teach is to serve. How can I serve if I immediately close myself off to this new way of sharing? And how can I best serve if I am feeling an immense disconnection? So what better time than now to come together as a community to support each other and, in turn, the people who are looking to us for guidance on navigating this wild, difficult, beautiful human life?
If this type of connection is calling to you as well, please feel free to join this Teacher Community Circle (I feel like I should call it something cooler, but I haven’t quite gotten there just yet). Let me know how I can best support you, and if there is any specific thought or topic you really want to dive into. We are all in this together, and we are here to love and lift each other up!
Meeting Information:
Wednesday, April 29th, 1pm Pacific Time
Meeting ID: 316-575-7586
Meeting Password: Grounding
(capital G, the rest is lowercase)
Sending you all Love and Light!
Amanda