Phony

A cook is someone who cooks.
A painter is someone who paints.
A dancer dances, and, well, you get it.
A yoga teacher....teaches yoga, meaning...
As part of dealing with my quick temper, I picked up and read Marshall Rosenberg’s book called NonViolent Communication. In this book, I realized that labelling someone under their occupation is akin to labelling someone who gets angry as an “angry person” of course. A few months later, I had a very violent encounter with a best friend. It was time to test these concepts I had read.

After the initial, repulsive feelings had passed, I began to think about my thoughts, bringing the all-important awareness to what had happened for me.
My first thought, after the friend following me from yoga class to yoga class, teaching lunch hours and evenings, was that, as a “yoga teacher”, I should not have got so angry. And secondly, since anger is part of the samskaras of my life, a history of patterning, I saw this event as more reinforcement as my existence as the scary “angry person”.

Can a yoga teacher have flaws, especially ones that are in direct conflict with the ideals of ahimsa (non-harming)? Based on the evidence of my own experience with teachers being flaky, lying, doing harm to themselves with alcohol and drugs, it is most obvious we can be hypocrites.
But I know all this.

So the second wave of thoughts about my thoughts is that my ego, wanting to appear as flawless, is getting in the way of me continuing my path down ahimsa. Instead of accepting what happened and making whatever amends I could, my ego would rather bash me over and over again, making sure that I know how “bad” my actions were, that I am a total phony.

So now, I wonder how to bring these lessons to my class, to my life.
First of all, I realize that although counselling and reading has helped me at the most difficult moments to feel that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, I don’t feel those tools are the answer to anger and self-harm. I think meditation is, as we have to be in the here and now rather than dwelling on the past. I have to admit then, that I am not ready for meditation in the setting I imagine it involves, and I’m not fully ready to spend hours on this.

Instead, I’ve started a simple practise of breath awareness and “so-ham” repetition, especially when my hurtful thoughts are at their peak. I’m not sure this helps, or if I am doing the right thing, but like all yoga, experience will tell me.