Yoga On & Off the Mat
Guru Guidance: Teaching is a Fundamental Aspect of Yoga
By Brooke Hewes, 3-07-08
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| Photo of Tane below courtesy of Krissy Frost. | |
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Yoga has always has been a student-teacher affair. Traditionally, the teacher was an enlightened master, a man, and the pupil a boy whom the master would bring into his home. In time, guru became father, teacher, and spiritual leader who imparted the tradition’s secrets only as fast and thoroughly as the student was ready to receive them. Some lessons were spoken, others were demonstrated, others were planted as seeds only to ripen with experience and time.
As yoga scholar Mircea Eliade writes in Yoga: Immortality and Freedom, “one does not learn yoga by oneself; the guidance of a master (guru) is necessary.” The guru initiates his or her pupil into the practice and guides them from this life to “another mode of being—that represented by liberation.”
Likewise, writes Georg Feuerstein in his book The Yoga Tradition, “authentic yoga,” as opposed to what he terms the “pop” yoga of the West, is never a “do-it-yourself enterprise.”
Pop or not, the teacher-student relationship plays a role at some point in most modern yogi’s practice. Teachers of asanas (postures, which are central to Hatha Yoga), for instance, assist with alignment and anatomy; they provide individual attention and cater to injuries; and among other services, teachers weave in yoga’s spiritual roots and relevance. While today’s typical yoga teacher need not be enlightened, he or she usually has a mature practice from which to draw.
Tane Talalotu is a yoga student and teacher in Missoula. She has traveled as far as Mysore, India, and as near as Spruce Street to nourish her yoga practice. Proper guidance, she feels, is part of the yoga tradition that should never fall victim to Feuerstein’s “pop” practice.
Below I share a recent conversation with Tane during which she discusses the teachers in her life—both on and off the mat.
New West: First things first: when did you start practicing yoga?
Tane Talalotu: It has after my son was born, so in June of 2001. My best friend said she thought I’d like yoga. I was working at Benjamin News, which distributes magazines all around the northwest, driving a fork lift. We could keep magazines and for some reason—I have never tried yoga—the only one I kept was Yoga Journal. I went to a Bikram class and immediately I loved it. I tried Ashtanga a year later and was hooked.
NW: When did you decide to go to India to study with Guruji? [Guruji K. Pattabhi Jois is the founder of the Ashtanga Research Institute in Mysore, India.]
TT: I went in 2004. At first I wasn’t really thinking about going at all. I don’t have any money. But I was telling my boss about Katie [Katie Heath owns the Yoga Fitness Center in Missoula, where both women teach Ashtanga Yoga] studying with Guruji and my boss asked if I would like to go to India. I said that was impossible. She said if you want, I’ll help—I’ll pay for the tickets and you can pay it off. So I started working at home in the evenings and on weekends. Basically, she bought me and Happy [Tane’s son] tickets to go.
No one — especially my family who was worried about my son, who was three at the time — wanted me to go. But I didn’t care because I wanted to see what it was like. I knew it would be OK. Mysore is a good place.
NW: What was it like being around Guruji?
TT: Amazing. People are just so committed. They really love that man. There is just this light and joy about him. His eyes are this amazing light brown, so bright and full. You just want to hug him.
The gate to the studio is locked until 5 a.m. People who have been coming for awhile go first. I was new so I didn’t go to practice until 6 or 6:30 a.m. It got so crowed that after backbends you went to the bathroom to do shoulder stand and the other finishing postures. It is intense. People are very serious there.
NW: How did practicing with Guruji and in India affect your practice when you returned home?
TT: It wasn’t the adjustments. It was just being there and seeing what people can do — what they’ve been taught and how they follow this one man. I think it is very important to see Guruji and see where this practice comes from. He’s the source. It is important to meet the person that you are following.
NW: As a teacher, what do you hope to share with your students?
TT: I want to share with them what I love. Yoga can be beneficial for anyone and it is just such an accessible tool. You only need a mat, or not even that. I want to share because I think it is so helpful, and it is fun, and I can’t think of a better way to make money by talking about what you love.
NW: Do you think it is important to have a teacher?
TT: It is so important to have teachers.
NW: What do teachers like David do for you? [David Garrigues teaches at the Ashtanga Yoga School in Seattle and who led Tane through a teacher training two years ago.]
TT: David has this amazing drive. He wants it. He is just so excited about the practice and he knows so much. I feel like, being a mother and working, that I can’t live the yoga life all the time. I can’t live with that level of dedication. So it’s important to have teachers that do, so that you can learn from them. This way I can live my own life without going to the extremes of an ascetic life. Click here to read David’s article about why practicing in the presence of his teacher, Guruji, is so important.
NW: Off the mat and out of the studio, who do you consider your teachers?
TT: Oh, I have so many teachers. My mother, my sister. One of my best teachers in life is my cousin Pete, who just died at 41 last week. Pete always loved everyone, but he had a special place in his heart for me.
I have many people that I call my teachers, including my son. Kids are so interesting. They are so refreshing and so much fun. You get to start all over again and be goofy and fun and not always have tot think about what we will or won’t achieve.
Related Reading:
- Daily Om, “Life, Your Perfect Teacher,” touches upon how the people and situations of our life are our greatest teachers: www.dailyom.com/articles/2006/5643.html
- Yoga Alliance: Resources for teachers and complete list of teachers registered with Yoga Alliance: www.yogaalliance.org/
- “The Student-Teacher Relationship” by Darlene Paris: www.consciouschoice.com/2002/cc1509/bodymind1509.html
- Daily Om, “Little Gurus,” discusses lessons learned from children: www.dailyom.com/articles/2007/9098.html
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Comments
A year ago, I became a disciple when Amrit Desai initiated me into the Shaktipat Kundalini lineage of teachers that goes back for thousands of years. This initiation process changed my life in that the commitment I made to the guru is really a commitment to follow his guidance until my love for him opens my heart to such a degree that I become connected with my own "inner guru", that part of myself that feels an intimate connection to my own divinity.
Through discipleship, the student establishes an even closer and very real connection with the entire lineage through the energy transmission that the guru gives in the initiation process. (It is like the difference between high octane gas and regular gas in your car's performance.)
When a student is ready to have a teacher (guru), the teacher will appear. Once found, it is important to stay with one teacher.
"You can dig one well a hundred feet deep, or you can dig ten wells ten feet deep." Which approach will take you deeper into your personal practice?
A guru is "successful" when he is no longer needed as a guide for his student. That is his goal, to be no longer needed. His guidance has created a direct path to that inner knowing and accountability that has always been available to the student, but not readily accessible to him, because of all sorts of psychological and social conditioning.
A yogi knows that he has been successful when his student's student's student has attained enlightenment. If everyone would embrace a teacher, become a teacher, and then inspire a teacher, wouldn't we have a much more loving and beautiful world?
Note: Amrit Desai is presenting a Yoga Nidra Intensive at Big Sky, Montana, on August 1 - 3, 2008. For more information, contact Delilah Eakman at or 406/995-4054.