Tag Archives: Questions

Find a Great Yoga Teacher: 5 Questions You Must Ask to Find a Qualified Yoga Teacher

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Find a Great Yoga Teacher: 5 Questions You Must Ask to Find a Qualified Yoga Teacher

Yoga provides great stress relief and other health benefits. The Mayo Clinic recommends yoga for stress management and relaxation, and medical journal articles have proven yoga’s effectiveness in treating serious medical conditions such as arthritis, back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, depression and multiple sclerosis.

How do you make sure that you get the great stress relief and other benefits of yoga? Easy! Ask any yoga teacher the questions listed below. If the teacher’s answers closely match the ideal answers, you have found a great teacher.

QUESTION 1: DO YOU PRACTICE YOGA NOW?

IDEAL ANSWER 1: YES, I PRACTICE YOGA EVERY DAY.

If you wanted to learn to ride a bicycle, would you take lessons from someone who wrote a book about bicycles but had never actually ridden a bike? Only if you wanted to find the quickest way to fall off the bicycle! No amount of reading or theoretical knowledge will enable you to understand how to ride a bicycle. Sooner or later you have to get on the bike. The same is true of yoga. Only someone who is currently practicing yoga can safely and effectively teach you how to do yoga.

QUESTION 2: ARE YOU CURRENTLY TAKING LESSONS WITH A YOGA TEACHER?

IDEAL ANSWER: YES, I STUDY WITH A QUALIFIED TEACHER IN A RECOGNIZED YOGA TEACHING STYLE.

Even your yoga teacher needs a yoga teacher. Why? Yoga is a process, and there is always more to learn. Everyone learns more about yoga by getting feedback from a great teacher. You want your yoga teacher to be aware of the latest discoveries on how to teach yoga. The best way for your teacher to do this is to take lessons with another yoga teacher.

QUESTION 3: WHAT TYPE OF YOGA DO YOU TEACH, AND HOW DID THAT STYLE OF TEACHING YOGA DEVELOP?

IDEAL ANSWER: I TEACH “Y” STYLE OF YOGA WHICH HAS EXISTED FOR AT LEAST 10 YEARS.

If a yoga teaching style has existed for at least 10 years, the teachers in that system know the best ways to teach and the pitfalls to be avoided. In addition, if a situation comes up that your teacher does not know how to handle, your teacher will be able to ask a more experienced teacher in that teaching style for advice.

QUESTION 4: WHAT TYPE OF YOGA TEACHER TRAINING HAVE YOU HAD?

IDEAL ANSWER: I HAVE COMPLETED (OR AM CURRENTLY ENROLLED IN) A 500 HOUR TEACHER TRAINING PROGRAM WHICH INCLUDES CLASSES, EXAMS, AND APPRENTICE TEACHING.

Suppose a pipe burst in your house and sent a fountain of water gushing through your kitchen. Uh-oh, you need a plumber! There are two plumbers in your neighborhood: Plumber Smith and Plumber Jones. Plumber Smith used to be an electrician but took a one weekend plumber certification course and is now a plumber. Plumber Jones enrolled in a year long plumbing certification course at a special plumber training school, passed the plumbing certification exam, and apprenticed for one year under a master plumber. Which plumber would you choose?

Since yoga can have an enormous impact on your health, shouldn’t you take as much care in choosing a yoga teacher as you would in choosing a plumber? Your yoga teacher should be enrolled in or have completed a yoga teacher training course that lasts at least one year, and includes classes on how to do yoga, classes on how to teach yoga, apprentice teaching under a certified and experienced teacher, and certification exams.

One of the most comprehensive yoga teacher training programs in existence is the Iyengar Yoga Teacher Certification Program. If you are new to yoga, or suffer from a disease or injury, I strongly recommend that you seek out a certified Iyengar Yoga teacher.

QUESTION 5: DOES YOUR YOGA TEACHER HAVE A KIND AND EMPATHETIC HEART?

IDEAL ANSWER: YES.

Only you can determine if the answer to this question is yes.

A kind yoga teacher really cares about his or her students.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that a teacher is quiet or a pushover. A teacher may speak loudly because your attention has wandered off and he or she is trying to get your attention back. A kind yoga teacher will carefully watch what you are doing, and guide you into doing yoga more correctly. Find a great yoga teacher, follow his or her instructions, and the health and stress relief benefits of yoga will be yours!

Get a coupon for a free yoga class or find a qualified Iyengar Yoga teacher at http://www.funnypath.com. Deborah Rummelhart is author of “Where Are My Ankles? How Iyengar Yoga Rescued Me From Stress Fear and a Very Bad Back,” which hilariously describes her experiences receiving the benefits of yoga.

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What is Yoga Nidra

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The best way to understand what Yoga Nidra is to understand who is practicing it.

The one who practices Yoga Nidra is a yogi and the clearest definition of what a yogi is comes from the Bagavad Gita 4:18 as follows: “One who sees inaction in action, and action in inaction, is intelligent among men, he is a yogi  and has accomplished everything (he is in the transcendental position although engaged in all sorts of activities).”

This definition evokes the obvious questions, “What does inaction in action and action in inaction mean?”

Inaction in action and action in inaction means that your very being is doing . For example in deep sleep you are not consciously active yet there is no discontinuity to life.

The practice of Yoga Nidra approximates deep sleep. In the practice ‘you’ are inactive yet you are awake, alert and active as your true nature – thus you experientially understand ‘inaction in action’, ‘action in inaction’ and you also then know what it means to be a yogi who has accomplished everything.

In this light Yoga Nidra is the practice of inaction is action and action in inaction.

Yoga Nidra Yoga

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Yoga Nidra is a yoga practice and it is the result of that practice such that the journey is the destination.

Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra 1.2 states ‘Yoga is the cessation of the modifications of the mind’. This sutra denotes both the process of dissolving mental modifications (i.e. modes of perception, sensations, psycho-emotional states, etc.) into the ‘mind-field’ (citta) and the result as mental treanquility wherein Awareness is pure and unmodified.

In this light it is clear that the practice of Yoga Nidra is Yoga as the union that is Presence when the ‘doer’ is relaxed-absent. In other words the mind is silent yet nothing has been lost; instead there is a clarity as seeing without the distortions or modifications that come from seeing through the lens of knowledge, memory and experience.

Thus Yoga Nidra is the practice of ‘yogic sleep’ as a means of being awake as your true nature.

Yoga Nidra – cause and effect

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Ancient Coin(click the image above for the animation)

Yoga Nidra is a means to see that cause and effect are two sides of the same coin. This is because what relaxes in the practice of Yoga Nidra is your thinking mind  or what I call the ‘hamster mind’.

When  your mind is silent you haven’t lost your mind – it is simply silent. Life continues while your mind is silent; what is different is that there is no distortion of what is seen as you no longer see things through the lens of knowledge, memory and experience. In this way there is an innocence in seeing as in infancy.

And it is patently obvious that you are not an infant. Thus you have the best of both – the innocence of the infant and the understanding of the adult. In this case what is seeing and acting is your fundamental nature which is awareness and here seeing and acting are not separate.

Lastly, this is not something that you are being asked to believe because it is self-evident when it is unfolding.

In this light it is clear that seeing is doing and that cause and effect are not separate; as stated above, they are two sides/phases of the same thing – like a wave.

Yoga Nidra – what it’s like…

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Sleeping Buddha

Imagine what it would be like to wake up inside a dream where the physical limitations that you are familiar with during the waking state are absent. In their place you find an unbounded territory that you can explore any way you wish.

What makes this so beautiful and so awesomely powerful is that this is not difficult as everyone has had dream experiences like the situation described above; what is not commonly understood is that in addition to consciously dreaming, the seeds that you plant while doing so flower across all states of consciousness including the waking state. In other words yoga nidra is a means for you apply synergistic principles like ‘energy follows awareness’ and what is popularly called the ‘Law of Attraction’.

Lastly what is most incredible about this process is that you access it by being at ease and deliberately relax out of the conscious waking state and awake aware and alert in the boundryless realms of alpha, theta and delta where you can explore without limitations.