On Teachers and Teaching

There are more and more yoga studios popping up each day. I used to live in New York City, where I still brag to anyone who is visiting, what excellent yoga teachers there are in the City.

Now I live in Toronto and I have visited quite a few yoga studios, with only a few outstanding experiences with teachers. Many of the studios I visited did not seem interested in feedback, neither good nor bad, thus I was inspired to take my views to a blog.

I will slowly but surely cover many of the well known yoga studio's in the Greater Toronto region.

According to B.K.S Iyengar, "The teacher should be clear, clever, confident, challenging, caring, cautious, constructive, courageous, comprehending, creative, completely devoted and dedicated to knowing the subject, considerate, conscientious, critical, committed, cheerful, chaste and calm.

Teachers must be strong and positive in their approach. They must be affirmative to create confidence in the pupils, and negative within themselves so that they can reflect critically on their own practices and attitudes. Teachers must always be learning. They will learn from their pupils and must have the humility to tell them that they are still learning their art. . . .

If you want to go on to do a PhD or even more, then that is up to you, but the important thing is not the certificate. What is important is whether you are sincere, whether you are humble, whether you are compassionate. You have to be compassionate as well as merciless. The two have to go together, but you must know where to be compassionate and where not to be compassionate in order to help the pupils with their problems."