It's a Practice
By Emily Faber
My mom, fully supportive of my decision to sign up for a yoga teacher training program, had just one concern: “Are you going to end up covered in tattoos?”
Never one to judge someone’s means of self-expression, my mom had nonetheless made note of the heavily tattooed teachers leading my training, delicate flowers creeping up their arms and rocket ships launching from their ankles. To her, tattoos on another person’s body are simply ink deposited into skin. But on my body, tattoos wouldn’t be permanent works of art but an irreversible blight on an empty canvas. And so, the playful tone of a question asked (mostly) in jest failed to fully conceal her true apprehension.
I didn’t want my teachers’ tattoos, though.
I wanted their knowledge. I wanted their secrets. I wanted their ability to craft 60-minute experiences that left me feeling like an entirely new person than I had been when I unrolled my mat. I wanted their playlists, or at least their talent for using each class’s soundtrack to fling me onto an emotional rollercoaster.
More than anything, I wanted their demeanor — that sense that, when they walked through the studio’s dappled sunlight and set their iced latte on the shelves at the start of class, they really, truly, positively had their lives together.
So I promised my mom no tattoos, and the training began.
Somehow, a five-breath hold in boat pose can feel longer than 200 hours of yoga philosophy chats and anatomy lessons. Compared to the torturous eternity of navasana’s “one last breath,” the utopia of my teacher training program seemed to last only for an exhale. I was thrust into the world of leading actual students through down dogs and warriors, and it became obvious, especially to my self-critical mind, that I didn’t emerge from my studies with newfound sequencing superpowers. I cued transitions that made sense only on paper. I mixed up left and right. I lost my place. I forgot poses.
Eventually, I gave up on the idea that practice makes perfect. Instead, I had to settle for improvement.
As teachers, we learn with time to laugh off these types of mistakes — “I was just testing who was paying attention,” for instance, when a pose is skipped on one side.
Physically, too, we start to reveal our imperfections, creating a more accessible class through the acknowledgement that — look everyone!— we haven’t mastered it all either. “We’re working toward splits today,” I’ll say, the phrasing of “working toward” intentional as I demonstrate something that at least somewhat resembles a split, albeit with a heavy reliance on blocks and a mile between my body and the floor.
My legs shake in boat pose. I sweat in side plank. In padahastasana: “I like a bend in the knees here. Maybe you’ll try that, too.”
Sure, I’ll show you my inability to hold a handstand.
Here’s what I don’t show.
The other day, I took a class on Zoom during a sliver of space carved out of a chaotic day. I set out my mat, and I took a seat on my block, and I waited for the teacher to begin, and I felt like I could barely breathe. He started cueing deep inhales and slow exhales, and my throat closed up. He directed us into sun salutations, and I stayed in my seat. I turned off my camera, and I reclined on my mat, and I hugged my knees to my chest. Maybe 20 minutes passed, maybe 30, before I felt ready to rejoin the class.
In the fall of 2018, I had an acquaintance take my class, and I skipped an entire sequence on the left side. Don’t dwell on mistakes, I tell myself as I recall a nearly five-year-old memory at least once a month. Often, the recollection melds with a breast cancer charity class I taught for my mom back in 2019, the deafening silence of my mind going blank in front of all her friends ringing just as clearly today.
Five years of teaching, and I’ve cried in front of students only once.
But at home, I cry over bad reviews, and I cry when I get stuck planning a 7 a.m. class at midnight the night before, and I cry when a sequence I so carefully crafted winds up feeling like nothing more than a total failure. I cry when I feel like nothing more than a total failure.
It’s not always tears. Sometimes it’s an internal rolling of eyes upon hearing an affirmation that I immediately label as cheesy, followed by the thought that there must be something wrong with me if everyone else is transforming their lives through positive phrases. It’s the inability to focus during a 15-minute meditation and the perception that I must be inferior to those who start each morning not with a dozen staggered alarms but with their internal clocks tuned to the sun, journals on their nightstands, and grounding exercises. It’s an intention to just get through the hour, when all the other students’ minds gravitate toward the profound.
Once, I led students through a stream of consciousness exercise. “My name is Emily. I’m in a yoga studio. I am sitting at the front of the room. I am talking,” I said as an example. After class, another teacher shared her initial sentences with me. They could have been published in a book of quotes.
I think back to my first teachers, their iced oat milk lattes inexplicably a symbol, to my mind, of having it all figured out.
Do any of us actually have it all figured out?
Or is it just that much harder to share the inner workings of the mind than it is to stumble in half moon?
All I know is that it’s a practice. I hear that a lot, and I say that a lot, and Patanjali tells us in the Yoga Sutras that we must practice, but it’s not always so simple to internalize. That’s okay, I remind myself. It doesn’t have to be simple. It’s a practice.
An anonymous reviewer gives me one star (they hated my voice, in particular), and I can’t help but be hurt.
It’s a practice.
Did I mention that happened at least a month ago, if not two?
It’s a practice.
I stumble over my words, and three hours after class has ended, I still feel stupid.
It’s a practice.
I get caught up in class counts and comparisons.
It’s a practice.
I tell myself that I’m not good enough, and I wonder if I should just quit.
It’s a practice.
It’s a practice.
It’s a practice.
It’s a practice.