I wonder what khalil gibran would write on teaching. this is probably a sacrilege but it is the tone that comes to mind.
here's mine.
On teaching yoga on a saturday morning.
Your students are not your responsibility. Your own energy is your responsibility. Be neither attached to their success, nor distressed by their avoidance. They will receive what is needed when they are ready. It is their path, not yours.
Just as you let lose your words into the studio, so you let your soul. But do not be distressed if the student does not respond. For their own filters cloud their ears, and they may choose not to hear what displeases them.
Stay true to your truth, for even if you amend your statements after learning more, so you will learn more by being true then by censoring.
Do not answer too many questions, but keep asking questions. The student will easily flow forth with their own insight, but leave and make space. Throughout your teaching, create space, spaces for discovery, insight and deep breath. But guide that space with care and precision to lead it to optimal insights.
Worry not for what they may expect, because it is your duty to teach at every moment, not just deliver instructions to a vacuum. The words and instincts you are given are not from you but from the divine, so do not hold back.
Be neither authoritative, nor overly passive. Do not force your own technique nor let the student do whatever he wishes. Do not attach egoistically to your own perspective but do not accommodate the student's ego either.
DO not look at your students for validation or for praise. Make each class an offering and have no attachment to the return. The connection you feel to source is the validation you seek.
Be here now, open yourself to the flow and the flow will guide you. trust both your instinct and you knowledge.
And be grateful, for this is a beautiful job to be given.
Hari Om, Tat Sat.
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I have taught many students, many topics. That feeling that the teaching comes through you from some other deep source does not happen all the time. You can't force it or plan it. But when it does, wow! You are at once so big and so small, so aware and so clueless, so useful and so trivial.
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