College was the first place where I was truly introduced to teachers who were significantly older than I was. I went to a high school that got teachers right out of teacher’s college, many of which were still in school to sharpen their teaching skills. They were my best teachers because they were so intrinsically connected to being students. This is something yoga is really good at expressing: the cyclical nature of teaching and learning. One does not teach because they are done learning; one teachers because they want to transmit the knowledge they already have in order to make space for the new. That is why teachers go to school to learn how to teach and why their education does not stop once they start educating others. Teaching, in effect, makes you accountable to your own learning. One of the worst lies is “those who can’t do teach.” NO – those who can, teach.

In order to know how to teach, it is necessary to know how to learn. In college, with phenomenal and distinguished professors many years my senior, I am able to learn in new ways from their extensive experience. At the same time, I craved tangible representation of what one could do at my age. I wanted a teacher who had what I wanted. My youngest teacher was (shocker) my yoga teacher. She was also my peer, three years ahead of me, and chock-full of humility. Humility is a basic tenet of any yoga practice and a necessary component of effective teaching.

“It’s okay to admit you don’t know something,” the director of my YTT said during our second day of training. “You’re not expected to have all the answers.”

To be humble means to have space to learn. That’s pretty essential for a college education. Yoga, accompanied by the student-teacher relationships that emerge from the practice, can help achieve that.

I am a huge fan of the hands-on adjustment. Someone else’s body touching my own can and used to be a terrifying thing. To be that close to someone else is considered weird in our society of distance. We have been socially conditioned to be afraid of closeness and intimacy. There is a boy on my hall at school who looks deeply into my eyes and stands with his face about an inch from mine when we talk (and it’s not like we’re about to hook up or anything). He is, unsurprisingly, a yogi and spent his gap year traveling to India. In my experience, people with spiritual backgrounds are less afraid of closeness. Nonetheless, when I first spoke to him, I stumbled backwards, intending to create more distance between us so that I could protect the oneness of my physical body.

But yoga teaches us that we are all equal. It teaches us to get rid of all the stuff we come onto the mat with, to see oneness with everyone in the room. It doesn’t matter that my pants are from Old Navy and the girl’s next to me are from Lululemon; we are both in the same downward-facing dog.

I felt that sense of oneness and union (the linguistic definition of yoga) when I was first adjusted with hands of love by my teacher. I was in an uttkatasana (chair) twist and she pressed her body up against mine. I was enveloped by her chest and arms getting me deeper into the pose. I felt her body healing my own with its proximity.

This was an intense adjustment. I assumed that because I liked intense adjustments, everyone else would too. I also assumed that as a teacher, my responsibility would be to bring that deepness about for my students. Naturally, I was confused in teacher training when we were told that less is more. For my body, more has always felt like more. Then, my teacher said, “Approach with a gentle touch.” And that was when it clicked.

I have a three-year-old sister. She is the youngest and is well-aware of how adorable she is. From ages one to two and a half, she had a hitting problem. If she wasn’t getting your attention at all times, she would swat you with her cute little hand. It wasn’t that her hand hurt physically, but the force she used to hurt you with her tiny body was heart-breaking. My stepmother tried to modify her behavior by telling her, rather than “no hitting” (because we all know how well kids respond to “no”), “gentle touch.” For a month, as she was breaking this habit, she would hit me and then I would remind her, “Gentle touch.” Her hand, which was clenched, would flatten as she sweetly stroked my arm instead.

“Gentle touch” is what a hands-on adjustment should be. To push too hard, to not meet a student where they are at, is like my sister’s hitting problem – well-meaning, but harmful. Ahimsa, the first yama, the foundation, means to cause no harm. With “gentle touch,” we heal, which is the essence of what ahimsa, and ultimately yoga, asks of us. 

Today, I was overcome with a fierce desire for diplomas, for certificates, for material legitimacy. I wanted to hold in my hand knowledge that I learned something, meta-knowledge, perhaps. I wanted to get all kinds of certifications - vinyasa, prenatal yoga, kids yoga, Jivamukti, Anusara, you name it - and hang them on my dorm room walls. I wanted tangible knowledge that I am learning, something I can touch because right now, bits and pieces of life-altering knowledge are being sewn together in my head. 

But then, sitting in my YTT, I realized that knowledge that I have learned is not tangible, but it can be measured. It is measured through teaching.

What good is an education if you don’t do anything with it? Off The Mat And Into The World is both a name of an organization that I love and it happens to conveniently sum up all of yoga philosophy. What good is a pose if it is not an embodiment of something larger? What good is the yoga on the mat if it does not serve you and others when the 90 minutes are up? 

Master teacher Michael Hewett says his reason for creating the Sarva Yoga Academy is because too often, he sees artists go on to become yoga teachers initially as a way to finance their passions for art while doing something that can enhance their art on a spiritual level. Then, once they “officially” become teachers, they switch hats with an either/or mentality, that dualism, the extremes, that yoga warns us against. They abandon their art for this spiritual practice, devoting all their time to yoga. They miss the point. The point of all this svadyaya (self-study) and spiritualism is not a life in its own right. It is a practice to enhance life. Yoga itself is an education in life. It is every practitioners dharma - their duty - to go out and live it, off the mat and in the world. 

I am undertaking many a spiritual journey this summer and one of these is a creative one. I love to write. I write Young Adult fiction and poetry. I need yoga to keep my mind clear so the creative bursts may emerge. Yoga is not a copout for creativity and I am grateful there are teachers who do both/and instead of either/or to show me the way. 

This is the issue with “professional,” “full-time” students. You know the type - the 40-year-olds roaming campus who are not your professors. I am of the school of thought that with extensive education, with intensive learning, there is an obligation to teach. Those students have a duty, a dharma, to teach and pass on what they are learning.

If everyone is a student - and everyone is - they everyone is also a teacher. We have everything within to succeed. To not use it is a waste. Through learning, we teach and eventually, through teaching, we learn. We teach to preserve what we have learned. 

I became a Spanish tutor when my high school had to cut out its foreign language department due to budget cuts. I wanted to continue learning Spanish so badly. In order to progress, I had to practice it and in order to get to the more advanced vocabulary and grammar, I had to go over my basics. So what did I do? I started teaching it to someone else. Now, doing this YTT, I am doing the same thing. I am learning what a carefully-aligned tadasana can do for my spine through breaking it down for beginners. Then, in my own practice, I am able to go further because I have cleared that mental space for the new to come in.

The more I shed what I do not need and give it to others, the more space I get in my own life. That space is not vacant and certainly does not lie dormant. No, that space is intended for the new to come in. Without room in our minds, bodies, hearts, there is no space for the new to enter. That is why we practice vinyasa. In training tonight, I was told that vinyasa means “to place in a special way.” That special way invites a sequence which is intended to create space in the poses so that we may gain new - otherwise known as deeper - expressions in future poses. Every pose is part of a greater process for which there is no end result. It can’t, therefore, be about just one pose, a statement the director of my training cannot emphasize enough for students engaged in a tug-of-war of body and mind. 

And so it is with teaching. We must create space to make way for the new, for larger and more expansive knowledge and for the subsequent, larger, and more expansive life. Teaching is the most direct form of giving, of recycling the old for the new so that others may do the same. 

I am learning how to let the waves of the teachings that have come before me wash over, hydrating my body so that I may store that potential energy so that it can kinesthetize later in my own teaching.

Originally, I thought I would relocate this blog to my new website, but then I realized something: this blog is not about me. This blog is about yoga in college and while I am the demographic that I am writing about and to, yoga for college students is a cause and topic so much larger than just me.

And Tumblr is the venue where I want to write about it because Tumblr is social and interactive and allows me to connect with likeminded people through seeking out inspiration from them.

That said, I want to introduce the future of this blog:

Sunday Routine ~ I have a slight obsession with how people spend their time because what we do says a lot about who we are. Thus, I will be modeling this series off the NYT’s Sunday Routine column in the Metropolitan section. But there’s a twist! The routines I will profile will be those of yoga teachers! Clearly, they’re not in class or teaching 24/7. They have lives outside of the yoga room and it is using these lives that we see how the practice can be embodied off the mat.

Meditation Mondays ~ My own meditation practice currently consists of ten minutes in the morning of Metta, or Lovingkindness meditation. It is something I have not explored super in depth and yet the purpose of yoga is simply to get a better seat for meditation so I will embark on this journey through this blog, by featuring different styles of meditation every Monday.

Dharma Talk Tuesdays ~ Pretty self-explanatory - I’ll post a dharma class from one of my classes that week, now that I’m teaching!

Teacher Thursdays ~ Expect a video of an awesome and inspiring yoga teacher!

Sutra Saturdays ~ The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali are, more or less, the yogi’s handbook to life. There are many translations out there, but on this blog, I want to synthesize the translations I’m reading and translate them into the language the college student speaks - that of hookups, midterms, dorms, roommates, frat parties, libraries, and campus life.

Oh, and in case you can’t tell, I’m a sucker for alliteration!

I’m excited to embark on this journey with you.

Maxine is a yoga teacher for kids, adults, and families, and it is abundantly clear why when you see how she values family and service and living life in the same breath. She is also the head of PR for Melissa & Doug, the educational toy company, as well as the creator of GaGa for Yoga and LAMPA, an inspirational website for life and yoga. Double life? I think not! Instead, Maxine is the perfect example of how to weave yogic principles into every act and role because let’s face it - yoga is meant to provide us with fun and abundance and love off the mat. Oh, and disclosure: her “routine” isn’t so much a routine due to the hurricane and having to go with the flow of east coast weather and of life so let this be an example of detachment to the specificities of routine.

COSTA RICA On vacation with my husdand Andrew, son Jeremy (age 10) and nephew Bradley (age 11) in Costa Rica.  Staying an extra day since we can’t get home due to Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene. Very fancy problem to have to stay at a resort in Costa Rica for an extra day of sun & play.

GRATITUDE Start my day out grateful for my husband, family and still being on vacation.

INTENTION & ACCEPTANCE Fill out my Tibetan 6x book for the 8am hour to set my intention and thoughts for the day. Watch the news to check on the storm in NYC and make sure that all our friends and family are ok.  Everyone is ok.  Tell myself it is OK to go back to sleep. Motivate myself and the boys to get out of the room and enjoy every bit of this beautiful ‘green’ country.

PLAY Play with our amazing new friends Stell (age 6) and Chloe (age 10) and their amazing mom Dr. Roma Franzia a magical pediatrian. Friends we were destined to meet.  Dr. Roma’s motto… “We encourage boredom” because this is where creativity comes from. This is what we believe too!

TEACH Teach some yoga to the woman who run the kids’ center and start to write out a kids yoga manual for them. Talk to the head of the kids program about sending her DVDs to teach the kids yoga. Note to self, shoot a series of kids yoga DVDs as soon as I get back home.

ATTENTION TO INTENTION Continue to fill out my Tibetan 6x book.  Keeping my intention and tracking my own mind.  Staying grateful for all.

TEACH SOME MORE At my husband’s encouragement, he watches all the kids while I give Roma a private yoga session. There is something very special to me to take care of those who take care of children. Hurt my knee in private session but choose not to let Roma know.  Eventually tell my husband, but have faith that if I stretch and have belief that I can’t really get hurt doing service I will be fine in the morning. 

FILLING UP THE WELL Tell my husband I need to shower and rest.  He and everyone else is very disappointed that I am not going to hang out for our last night together.  I go t the room, shower and look for something to watch on TV and fall asleep. I realize I feel very empty without my family and new friends. I am a little refreshed, still tired and sore, but there is no way I can be without my loved ones. I get all dolled up and go to dinner. Have a lovely time with everyone and fall asleep on my husband’s lap.  Chloe calls me a ‘big baby’.  I say ‘yes I am.’