Freakish Flexible is Not a Requirement for Teaching Yoga

One of the myths about yoga teachers is that we are side-show flexible. While I have encountered practitioners and instructors who bend in ways that look just so very wrong, flexibility comes with time, and one can only work with the body he/she has. That is to say that though human beings are based on a standard blue-print variations abound. Length of bones and the angles at which they connect count, and so do our genetic predispositions towards building muscle mass, fat storage and elasticity of skin and ligaments.

For example, I possess a natural openness of my hips in external rotation. I did nothing to facilitate this over the years, but yoga has enhanced it. Conversely, I have a miserable issue at the ankle that makes rotation a challenge. Yoga can't alter anything about my skeletal frame and how balls insert into sockets. What I was born with is all there will ever be. That's why pose variations exist because yoga acknowledges differences and demands, really, that we listen to them.

As a teacher, I have a few moves that will silence any student's inner critic, but I am no Tara Stiles or Michael Stone. I will amaze no one with painful to watch demonstrations of pretzel-ness. And it's not necessary that I do so. Anyone who exceeds my own ability isn't likely to be in one of my classes anyway. How do I know this? Because I avoid teachers whose abilities don't match my needs and am under no illusions that this hasn't happened to me too.

I had a student confide that she found another yoga instructor not to her liking because she couldn't help but compare her style to mine. This teacher was younger, slimmer and more bendy than I am, but that isn't what the average student is looking for in a teacher or class. Students want personality and confidence. They seek warmth and someone who knows something about how the body works in poses and what poses do for the body.

Mostly though, students want to be recognized and not just a body on a mat. Flexibility is nice, but it's not what brings most students into your class.