Do we yoga teachers talk too much?

In 1998, the fitness center where I taught exercise classes offered a yoga teacher training geared toward fitness instructors.  Believing I would have to sit still and chant ‘OM’ for the whole weekend, I was not excited, but I needed the continuing education credits. After the first night I realized how wrong I was about the physical nature of an asana practice. I could barely walk to my car. 

The final day of the training the instructor had us in a yoga pose called  legs up against the wall for over an hour. It was during this time while quiet but alert that I had an overwhelming experience of God’s presence. As my friend and I walked out of the club she described an experience very similar to mine—and that was the night Yogadevotion was born. 

In the early years I cued a yoga practice pretty much like a fitness instructor, watching the students for proper alignment and ability to breathe while holding a pose, and I talked  a lot. With the exception of 5 minutes of savasana (corpse pose), it was really just another fitness class. After meeting and taking a class with Baron Baptiste at a fitness conference, I realized there was more to teaching yoga so I signed up for a boot camp in Maya Tulum with him that promised to expand my knowledge of yoga philosophy. 

We began our day with a silent meditation walk.  Silence was a new practice in the fitness yoga world. Ninety some people practiced for eight hours a day in a hot, shuttered yurt. He played music explaining that American yogis were uncomfortable with silence, so a mix of music and silence was integrated in our practice. He did not cue a lot. He would lead the class by demonstrating and having his assistants placed around the room so we could follow them as needed. As he moved around the room, Baron spoke quietly to each of us.   

When he got to me we had been in frog pose (my least favorite pose) for quite a while.   This pose in yoga philosophy is connected to emotional release,  and I was tearful. I was tearful because my body is not made for that pose, yet I was driven by the idea that more is better. When he came to me he simply said: “Why are you suffering?  There is no perfect pose except that which is perfect for your body.”  That may not seem like a big revelation in today’s yoga world but back then in 2003, they were the perfect words for me to hear. 

An even bigger take away came when in one of his final classes he suggested we “preach always, sometimes even use words.” Now this isn’t original to Baptiste. In fact, it is often attributed to St. Francis of Assisi. Although it’s not been proven, it was the first time I had heard it and it stayed with me through seminary and to this day. 

After the boot camp I started watching my words and how I used them as a teacher. Teaching yoga without relying on my fitness cuing was a big shift. I switched the devotions I read in my Yogadevotion classes to the beginning of classes when people are getting settled in pranayama rather than during savasana. Making this small shift with the devotions, and adding more silence, provided an opportunity for students to experience the presence of God as I did in my first class. All of this began to make sense to me after I completed an advanced training, witnessing how few cues the traditional yoga instructors used and how carefully they chose their words. Even when they were weaving yoga philosophy into the class, they were nuggets not a whole meal. 

Photo courtesy of Yogadevotion’s instagram page: @yogadevotion1.

When “Christian Yoga” became popular I was interested in how other Christians integrated yoga and faith. I was surprised at how I left the classes more tense than when I came in. That was hard to understand, because I love scripture and I love yoga. What I discovered is I didn’t like all the words, repeated scripture, and personal theologies of the instructor. I felt like I was being preached at or in a Bible study where I couldn’t engage in a dialogue or debate. My mind stayed busy. I really just wanted to get to the place where my body calmed and I felt alert to be aware of God's promised presence that yoga asana typically offered. For me, if a theological idea is offered I side track almost immediately, questioning its truth.  In traditional yoga classes I have seldom experienced wordy teachers, but I will admit it is easier for me to not hang on to the words of a less familiar tradition or Sanskrit.

Now, I am not saying all faith-integrating yoga classes are like that but I have experienced enough classes that weave too many theological points in throughout the class. I was  prompted to first look in the mirror and ask, do I talk too much in my yoga classes? Do we collectively try too hard to drive home our own personal theology? To answer that question I began to research the topic paying particular attention to what yoga philosophy has to say about right words. 

There are many articles and a lot of opinions out there, but the one that struck a chord with me years ago is an article in Yoga Journal, “Mindful Speaking: A Practice That Can Change Your Reality.” 

Even though this article was published in August of 2007, I repeatedly return to it because it references some of yoga’s greatest teachers and teachings. Patanjali, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Upanishads all address mindful speech and right words.  So does Proverbs in the Bible.  The words we say have more impact than we may realize. Sometimes the words resonate, and sometimes they are triggers. This is especially true if our words are overly religious in a context where our words can’t be unpacked or are heard by someone who has been hurt by the institutional church. The article goes on to suggest what we say not only affects others but may reveal our own emotional energy which can be positive and transformative or challenging.  

It is easy to understand why we might get carried away with our words. If we have had an experience of God’s presence as I did in my first yoga training, of course we want to share it. As a pastor I love preaching because I want everybody to know about God’s love, grace, mercy, and promised presence. I want people to know nothing can separate us from God’s love and the way of Jesus affirms a loving relationship with God. 

Jesus is careful with words, always crediting the Creator with words he speaks. I truly understand why we might feel called in our exuberance to speak more than we ought while teaching yoga, but perhaps at the intersection of yoga philosophy and theology we should adhere to the idea of preaching always, sometimes even use words.

Featured image by @ninjason via Unsplash.